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Published: August 6th 2013
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Magnificent is the word that comes to mind after walking around Vienna. So many beautiful buildings, palaces, churches, other big buildings. Spent a lot of time walking around but also done more visiting places than we have in other places. Trying to decide which museums/ palaces to visit was challenging, especially given that we decided to manage without a guide book. Spent a good part of one day at the Schönbrunn Palace and gardens on the outskirts of the city (once in the countryside). It’s not as beautiful as the Hofburg Palace here in the city but it was interesting going round the 40 or so rooms they have opened to the public, free audio guide helped). Lots of history of the Hapsburgs that we have kept coming across in Central Europe. The gardens were very large with some interesting features, but not particularly attractive with lots of big gravel tree-lined avenues. Surprisingly we saw four woodpeckers and other birds in a quiet bit of woodland.
The Imperial Treasury in the Hofburg palace was an interesting visit, worth getting the audio guide there too as there wasn’t a lot of information given. Some magnificent and very old pieces dating back
Charlemagne. Including beautiful feather pictures from the native Indians of Columbia from the 16
th century, still with shimmering colours of parrot feathers. In fact there was too much information on the audio guide, our brains started freezing over so we had to start skipping through, I ‘m sure we missed some interesting facts! Starting to get more of a picture of the Holy Roman Empire, Austo-Hungarian Empire and the power of the Hapsburgs.
I made a decision to go to the Leopold museum as the one out of four possible art museums to visit, I’m not sure it was the right decision, the blurb indicated there were a lot of Klimt and Egon Schiele here, but there weren’t many. Apart from seeing a few genuine Klimts the exhibition of Manfred Bockelmann called “Drawing Against Oblivion” with large charcoal portraits of children who died in Auschwitz or Birkenau.
The final major visit was to the Spanish Riding School morning exercises. It was impressive (as non-horsey people) to watch the control the riders have over the famous Lipizzaner white stallions. Although they don’t do any of the major ‘tricks’ or do things in formation it was still a great to
watch and beautiful winter riding school from the 18
th century with it’s crystal chandeliers all adds to it.
In various wanderings we popped into St Stephen’s cathedral, St Michael’s and St Paul’s churches, the latter small, old and interesting, St Michael’s has lots of information boards that explain things such as the 13
th century frescos and vertical grave. Walked out to the Hundertwasserhaus museum, known for its interesting façade and interior designed by the architect Freidrich Hundertwasser. Went through the pleasant Stadt gardens and the Prater amusement park with the most ancient looking ferris wheel, looked like mini port-a-cabins going round. So many huge and magnificent buildings to feast the eyes on as you walk around, avoiding the horse drawn carriages, meandering ice-cream eaters and many cycles.
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