Lipizzaners and More!

Today begins with a walk back to the Hofburg Royal Palace in central Vienna to see the world famous Lipizanner Stallions, the performing horses at the Spanish Riding School that is celebrating its 450th anniversary this year.  As noted before, the stallions only perform on weekends, and we will not be here on a weekend.  But you can buy a ticket to their morning practice sessions each day (except Monday).  We arrive early, about 9:30am, and there is already a long line to get in.  No worries, they sell plenty of tickets.  Soon we are in and find a seat on the second level.  I initially thought it would be okay to stand on the first level.  An American woman next to where I was standing (she was seated) overheard me say that Rob and I could stand.  When I commented that it was unlikely that we would stay the entire two hours, she told me, "I am!"  My reply to her was, "You must be a big fan!"  I said it nicely, though.

When the practice begins, we learn that there is to be no photography, which disappoints me greatly, since I really wanted a picture.  However, the horses might be spooked if everyone's flashes were going off.  I did take a picture of the arena before the practice started.  This is what it looked like:

As it turns out, the practice is not a rehearsal for the show, but just horses (four or five at a time) trotting around in circles (with music, though).  The music is actually the best part, because watching the horses is a little bit boring.  We leave after one half hour (others do, too).  It seems that taking money for these practice session is kind of taking advantage of us tourists.

Our next activity is to go to the grand art museum of Vienna, the Kuntshistorisches Museum.  We had walked past on a previous day to admire the outside, now we can admire the inside.  It is truly beautiful!  Here are a few pictures:

For the most part, the art is okay, not really to my taste.  A lot of old Italian paintings like Caravaggio that all start to look alike to me.  I do like a few Velasquez portraits of little Spanish princesses, though. The real highlight is in the Flemish paintings, particularly one room, which displayed a rather large collection of paintings by Peter Bruegel the Elder, truly beautiful, including his masterpiece, "The Tower of Babel."  Here is an image of the painting that I found online:

The museum is also known for having one of the world's best coin collections, but we passed on that.

We had thought we might try to tour Vienna's State Opera House today, so we walked to the Opera House to check on the schedule.  Unfortunately, there are no tours offered today, but tomorrow's schedule had tours offered in English at 2 and 3pm.  We will come back tomorrow.  Across the street, however, is another treat that is available.  We decide to have lunch at the Cafe Sacher (in the Hotel Sacher), which is the home of the Sacher Torte!  It is an old style Viennese cafe that is very charming.  We are seated, and we each start with a toasted ham and cheese sandwich that is very good and surprisingly not outrageously expensive.  Then for dessert, Viennese coffee and the famous torte, first created in 1832.  It is essentially a dense, chocolate layer cake with apricot jam between the rich layers (but not too much apricot, just enough to give a hint of flavor).  We share one, but really, I could have eaten a whole piece on my own -- really, really, really good!  We each had a Viennese coffee which was filled with whipped cream (of course Rob needed to take most of the cream out given his lactose issues).  Here is what it looked like:

After our late lunch, we strolled to the Austrian National Library, which is home to a grand room called the Prunksaal.  This library room is the largest Baroque library in Europe and features walls of bookshelves holding thousands of old books, plus statuary, and a globe collection.  It is spectular.  Here is a photo:

We spend a fair amount of time here just looking around.  There is also an exhibit about the history of the city of Vienna that is very interesting.  We are surprised to see information about the Palais Epstein in one display case.  It turns out that it was one of the impressive palaces built along the Ringstrasse.  The Epstein family was well known for their appreciation of the art.  Here are two photos I took:

This was a very pleasant surprise.  It is now later in the afternoon, and we have completed our touring for the day.  We do a little shopping to try to find Rob a new pair of shoes, but were unsuccessful.

Dinner tonight will be a return to the seafood restaurant, Merlo, where we'll eat the mixed grilled seafood plate that we had also eaten on Monday.  It was that good!