Vienna's Schonbrunn Palace

Today, we are in for a treat:  Schonbrunn Palace.  This is Europe's most lavish royal palace after Versailles in France.  Fortunately, it is not too far away and can be reached via a short subway ("U Bahn") ride, so that is what we do.  Having been warned that the crowds can be massive here, we had purchased our tickets in advance to avoid the ticket line.  However, when we arrive at about 9:30am, the line is not too bad (this would change later, Rob observed).  Our ticket entitles us to enter the royal palace for a tour of the royal apartments between 11 and 11:30am.  This leaves us plenty of time to explore the enormous gardens first.  Here is the sight that greeted us at the front of the palace:

We walk to the right side of the palace to begin exploring.  The first garden is a formal garden with fragrant roses and wisteria.  This is the Empress Elizabeth's garden (yes, we are referring yet again to "Sisi" -- yuk).  It is lovely, but we don't tarry; we make our way to the other side of the palace where we can admire the expansive gardens.  Here is this spectular view:

That is the Neptune Fountain straight ahead with a building called the "Glorette" on top of the hill.  The Gloriette is what the British would call a whimsy.  An attractive structure with no real purpose except to look good.  What a place to be!  We walk ahead for a better view of the Neptune Fountain:

From here we have a little time to burn so we wander around a bit, admiring the Obelisk fountain as well, then we return to the palace and enter another formal garden on the other side called the Orangery, probably because it is full of citris trees.  Here is a view of the side of the palace with the Orangery garden.  We are a little too far away to make out the citris in this picture, but they are there.

Now, it is nearly 11am, so we make our way to the tour.  There is not much of a line outside, but once inside it is slow going.  It takes everyone a while to get their audioguide devices and then up the staircase to begin the visit.  Boy, is it crowded inside!  We are shoulder to shoulder, and this is not even the busy season.  The information in the audioguide is somewhat informative, but it is really just the basic facts ... "This is where the emporer worked, this is where he slept, and so on."  All of the rooms have gold baroque styling and some are even more decorated, crossing into the rococo, heavily ornate style.  We are not permitted to take any pictures, which is a good thing.  If photos were permitted, the tour would slow down so much that we would never get through this!  The main hall is interesting in that Kennedy and Kruschev met here once, in June 1961.  Another room was were Mozart first performed for the royalty at age six; it"s said that once he finished he ran into the open arms of Empress Maria Teresa.  The room that impressed us the most was the one in which giant paintings depicting the wedding of Empress Maria Teresa's son, Joseph II are displayed.  They are very factual and were painted to document all of the attendees of the wedding.  The only item that played with the truth was in the inclusion of Mozart at the wedding.  In real life, he was too young to attend the wedding (only four).

After the tour inside, we stop at the cafe for lunch.  We each order a vegetable burger.  It was not what we expected.  It was a layer of sweet cole slaw (with kind of an orange flavor in the dressing), topped by a grilled slice of eggplant, kind of strange, but okay, we guess.  Then we walk through the gardens in another direction (past a rose garden that hasn't bloomed yet) and up the length of the gardens behind the palace to the Gloriette to admire the view of the palace.  The following photo shows this view:

We also pass a maze, which we photograph, but do not enter:

Then, we have seen pretty much all that there is to see, so we walk back to the U Bahn to return to central Vienna.  We get off the train at Karlsplatz to visit a few sights there that we have not yet seen.

First, we return to the Secession Building to see the famous Gustav Klimt mural/frieze for Beethoven.  It is quite lovely in describing visually what Klimt thought Beethoven was trying to convey musically in his ninth symphony.  No pictures were permitted here either.  Then we crossed the street to walk throught the Naschmarkt (open air food market).  It is actually more restaurants than I had imagined, though it is not someplace where I would necessarily choose to eat.

Finally, we walk to the nearby Karlskirche.  It is huge and features two large columns in front.  Very unusual for a Christian church, we think:

Inside is a little unusual as well.  It is a beautiful Baroque interior in pretty good shape  What is different is that a platform has been erected in the middle of the church that allows visitors to ride an elevator into the middle of the dome -- seeing the paintings up close that would normally only be visible from below.  Then you can walk up several flights of stair back and forth to get all the up into the tip top of the dome and look out the windows.  I got a little nervous being up so high on what kind of looks to be a temporary platform, although it seems to be permanent.  I kept thinking the whole thing was going to collapse in a pile in the middle of the church.  As soon as I get to the top, I am ready to come down.  

Our touring for today is now complete, so we walk along the Ringstrasse to our hotel, passing the City Park which is nice but a little small for a city park in my opinion.

Dinner tonight is back to Pfudl's near to our hotel.  This is where we had lunch on our first day here -- traditional Austrian food.  We each have the veal goulash with spaetzel with side salads, which turn out to be pickled cabbage, sweet potato salad and some greens.  It is good paired with an Austrian cabernet sauvignon (the most expensive wine on the menu).

The day ends with the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest on TV.  Of course, the show starts with last year's winner, Conchita Wurst, singing last year's winning song, "Rise Like a Phoenix."  She is fabulous!  The contestants in this year's contest, no so much.  All the songs are the same: power ballads, some better than others, but none that memorable (except maybe Greece).  Neither of us stays up to watch the entire show, however.