Our agenda today begins with a walk south to the Belvedere Palace, built by Prince Eugene of Savoy. He was a French aristocrat who pursued and was rejected for a career in the French Military. Consequently, he moved to Austria and declared his allegiance to the Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire. He was a great military leader and defeated the French to the west as well as the Ottomans to the east. His successful military career lasted over six decades. He built the palace for himself and intended it to rival the Hapsburg's Schonbrunn Palace. Today, the Belvedere Palace remains in very good condition and is home to a lovely art museum. It retains the love of art that Prince Eugene had (he was also a great collector of books -- 15,000 volumes of his reside in the Austrian National Library -- which we visited yesterday). The visit to the museum is a great success. There are older paintings, but most of them are landscapes, which I prefer to portraits of people I don't know or ecclesiastic art. They are very nice. There is one room that contains some nice impressionist art, including a Manet, a Monet, a Renoir, and others. This is a treat. Another room had a gorgeous Van Gogh landscape that we love. Here is the best photo I found on the internet, although it did not quite capture the color tones exactly -- it was way more green and aqua than this photo displays:
The star(s) of the museum, however, are the paintings by Austrian Gustav Klimt. I knew about his portraits of women, but his landscapes were unbelievable! My words won't do the art justice, so I'll just share some images (again only as good as what I could find on the internet) of what we saw:
The gardens of the Belvedere are really nice for strolling as well, but today's weather is not ideal -- still no rain for which we are thankful! Here are nice shots of the garden and lower palace from a window of the upper palace and a view of the upper palace from the garden:
We next walk back to the Ringstrasse to see if we can buy our tickets to the Vienna State Opera tour this afternoon. We learn that the ticket window only opens up one half hour before the tours, or at 1:30pm. We go to the mall next door and find a nice grocery where we can buy baguette sandwiches for lunch (we're going cheap today). Then it is back to the opera to wait for it to open; there are already several people waiting here.
We enter the building, and everyone segregates by language desired. Good news for us: the English tour goes first! We see the grand entryway, the side rooms where people go for intermission, and the tea salon room that was built for the royalty, but now can be rented by anyone. Then, of course, the grand hall itself. We have to say, it was a little underwhelming after seeing the State Opera House in Budapest. While the overall building in Vienna is much larger, the interior is much less grand. As it turns out, about three quarters of the Vienna Opera House, including the main theater, was destroyed by a bomb in World War II (in 1944). When deciding to rebuild, they made the decision not to try to recreate exactly what had been destroyed, but to create an interior that was of the style of the time, essentially the 1950's. I'm sure the building is an outstanding venue for appreciating the performances, but I have to say it is a little Kennedy-Center-esque, kind of dated almost. To sum up, perfectly nice, but the history of the place (pre-World War II) seems kind of lost. Having completed the tour here, I am really glad we saw the Opera House in Budapest, which has lost none of its old world charm (but has also been thoroughly renovated). The Budapest Opera House was almost certainly also the victim of damage in World War II, but perhaps not as much as in Vienna. Here is the interior of the main hall:
Well, that is it for our sightseeing in Vienna -- there was so much to see, and we certainly didn't see all of it, but we did our best. We made another unsuccessful attempt to shop for new shoes for Rob, then back to the hotel.
Before dinner, we enjoy a glass of wine in the Executive Lounge and meet Robin and Simon, who are attending the Eurovision semifinals tonight. They tell us that they have attended for the past five years and are going with people who have gone for the past fifteen years. It is a very exciting time here in Vienna with the song contest going on -- we learn that the teams from Sweden, Australia, and Azerbaijan are staying here at the Hilton. Robin is pulling for Sweden himself. I take a picture of this ticket:
Dinner tonight is at a restaurant called Plachutta, known for serving an Austrian specialty called boiled beef, really not the more appetizing name for a dish, but that is what they like around here apparently. We, of course, have to try it. In German, the name of the dish is Tagelspitz. The dish is served to you in a giant copper pot with vegetables. Initially the broth and vegetables is serve to us in soup bowls that have delicate noodles in the bottom. This creates a delicious beef noodle soup of a sort. This is very good, and not too salty. After the soup, the waiter fishes out the beef; they are steaks that look like sirloin. Two sauces are brought to accompany the beef: horseradish and a kind of herbed mayonnaise. The beef is served onto the plates, and side dishes of potatoes (kind of like hash browns) and pureed spinach with peas are also served. We had thought to order a red wine with this, but our waiter tells us that the tradition is to eat this with the white wine, Gruner Veltliner, so that is what we do (although many other tables seem to be drinking red wine). To be honest, boiled beef is pretty much what you would expect; I think grilling it would be tastier, but when in Austria ...
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