Vienna - in short

My guidebook repeatedly described Vienna as a place that “feeds off imperial nostalgia” thanks to the incredible reign of the Habsburg dynasty. I didn't quite know what that would feel like and I'm still not quite sure I could put it better but....it's incredibly true. An air of elegance and formality seemed to pervade our time in Vienna. It was night and day from Prague. Twice the population, twice as big and twice as advanced. Don't get the wrong idea about our hotel but it was essentially right off of the Newbury St. or Fifth Ave. drag in the downtown. I'm pretty certain there wasn't an Hermes in Prague!

Overall we enjoyed the city but really the highlights were either related to the Habsburg history or to the cultural aspects of the city. Our first day was all about choreography...first the horses and then the actors! We were able to score last minute tickets to the Spanish Riding School performance at the Hofburg palace (the Habsburg's city place). We thought we didn't have a chance as they apparently book up months in advance but we settled for waving at each other across the room just to get in the doors and have seats. The short story on the riding school is that it came about from the Habsburg's initial breeding of stallions in the 1500s to serve in their cavalry and as show horses. Today the pure white horses are still bred (only for show of course) and it apparently takes decades for a stallion to be a top performer. The venue was beautiful and the performance was quite impressive (see pics).

Our first night we also headed to the ballet at one of the two national theatres in town. It happened to be the Nutcracker which was nice as we at least roughly recalled the plot. It was definitely a new-age version of the story and sadly it lacked the soldiers that fall like dominos but the music was fantastic and the dancing impressive.

On our second and last day in Vienna we headed out to the near “suburbs” to tour Schonbrunn, the Habsburg's summer palace. They were prepping for a free Vienna Philharmonic concert the next night (we were bummed we'd miss it) so there was equipment everywhere but the palace and the grounds were lovely. The highlight of the palace was the ornate Rococo style rooms (sorry no pics allowed)...truly royal!

I'm going to leave the Vienna entry there b/c I'm far more excited to share what has happened over the last two days as we've driven from Vienna to Salzburg. We both definitely prefer to just explore the small towns of a country and have already had a few fun adventures so stay tuned!