Some people only visit a city once, especially if they have to travel more than 20 hours to get there. Well this was my
third visit to Vienna! It is now ranked as highly as Paris as my most frequented overseas destination outside of Asia. I've always been fond of Vienna. It has a certain charm, elegance and beauty surrounding it. It was afterall, the capital of the Habsburg Empire that ruled over vast parts of Europe for centuries. It's not a mega city on the scale of London or Tokyo, but it is a city that certainly offers everything those big cities offer as well.
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| A wet Viennese day...interesting lamp post though! Pinocchio? |
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| Hotel Bristol - A classic hotel that we stayed at. |
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| Vienna State Opera House by Night. Just brilliant! |
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| Vienna Concert House (I think) |
So what does one do on their 3rd visit? In my case, it was almost a repeat of the
2nd visit. I could have left my parents when we visited Hofburg Palace/Schonbrunn Palace/Kunsthistorisches Museum, but it's just easier to travel as a group rather than individuals. My parents loved the Sisi Museum exhibition just as I had anticipated, and viewing an exhibition again was not actually that boring. I had forgotten so much of what I had seen last time (it was a very long holiday in 06), so it felt like I was seeing things for the first time again! Same can be said with the Schonbrunn Palace Tour - it seriously felt like I was there looking at the palace interiors for the first time. Amazing. Kunsthistorisches Museum definitely felt larger than the first visit!! I must have skipped parts of the museum last time?! It's just mind moggling to see
so many pieces of art from all periods of history located here. My mum didn't enjoy Kunsthistorisches Museum as much as I thought she may have; and I am attributing that to our 8-hour long day of walking! (Note to self: We are not machines and cannot possibly cover 1 palace and 2 museums in a day without getting blisters or feeling exhausted!!!)
Items from the Imperial Silver Collection
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Candleholders & fruit platter holdings from Viennese courts (lots of gold!)
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| All the silverware were so meticulously displayed |
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| The Viennese courts really did have some fine items...love the use of green here |
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| Napkin folding can be quite an art form |
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| Front Entrance |
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At least this time round I got a photo with Schonbrunn :)
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| Gloriette |
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| Palace gardens |
We ate some of the
best cakes this trip at
Cafe Landtmann @ Schonbrunn Palace grounds. Cafe Landtmann is also located in Vienna City Centre. I love Viennese cakes!!
If you read my
last Vienna post, you would have noticed I really wanted to visit
A musuem within the
Museum Quarter grounds. This time round I made sure we were not in Vienna on a Tuesday so I could check out the exhibitions. As my guidebook recommended the
Leopold Museum - which houses a large collection of Austrian modern art (Schiele, Klimt, Kokoschka), I decided to check it out with mum. We were fortunate to see a special exhibition
Cézanne - Picasso - Giacometti, ...Masterpieces from the Fondation Beyeler. It was not a large exhibition, but just enough to get a flavour of the art movement. Next it was an uncharacterically quick browse through the museum because I thought I lost my mum half way through the rest of the museum walk!! So instead of focusing on the art I covered the four floors in the museum at least three times, only to see my mum walk out of the museum happily unaware her daughter was frantically looking for her. Luckily the museum wasn't too big despite being over 4 floors. I just didn't pay attention to the last level or so of art...
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| Cezanne |
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| Klimt |
We probably should have gone back to the hotel for rest after that episode, but since it was a Thursday evening and museums are open to late, what did we decide to do? Go to
Kunsthistorisches Museum!! In hindsight, probably not the best idea since it takes about 3 hours to get through properly. However, you become dillusional when on holidays and feel like you can conquer the world. We tried conquering Ancient Egyptian, Roman & Greek Antiquities. I think we actually did quite well with that. But we really pushed it when we tried to conquer European art - Spanish, Flemmish & Germanic styles...we failed to complete it, sad to say, but we were proud of our efforts. One palace and two museums in one day...that was quite a record!
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| Egyptian Antiquities |
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| The never-ending walls & rooms of European Masterpieces |
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| The very classy restaurant inside Kunsthistorisches |
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| You can tell from the pic we left the museum pretty late! |
What we all did differently this time was join a day tour to
Wachau Valley/Danube River Cruise. Vienna Sightseeing does a fantastic job of organising tours, so if you are time poor, these tours are great. As the coach drove out of Vienna city, the weather started turning a worrying grey; and once we were on the Danube cruise, it started raining. Not good! So we kept praying for a change of weather and thankfully the morning showers eventually cleared up and the sun shone brilliantly over Wachau valley. The clearer weather definitely made our visit to Melk Abbey so much more enjoyable.
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| On the cruise + an old castle (or something!) |
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| Wachau Valley |
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| View from Melk Abbey |
Melk Abbey, a Benedictine Abbey built in the Baroque style is absolutely worth a visit if you are in Austria/Vienna. It is a world reknown destination for a few reasons I will list below: (strictly my opinions only)
- It is located in one of the most beautiful parts of Austria
- The history of the abbey is longstanding. It was founded in 1089
- The architecture of this place is just stunning. All in the opulence and beauty of the decorative Baroque style
- It has an amazing library - Not that we were able to read any of the books, the library has secret doors just like the movies! (Not really, they have secret doors for another purpose which I can't remember now)
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| Mum inside the Abbey grounds |
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| Melk Church |
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| Library inside the Abbey...very cool I thought |
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| One of the brightest & ornamental baroque churches I've ever been to! |
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| View of abbey from the outside |
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| Scenery on the drive back to Vienna |
In total we enjoyed 3.5 wonderful days in Vienna + surrounds. A bit of the old and a bit of the new. We actually came back to Vienna (Oct 3) after our 2-day Budapest trip which I will update in the next post. I originally planned to do my European shopping in Vienna city after Budapest, but we came back on a Sunday where all shops are shut! I soon (defintion blurry depending if you ask me or the parents) got over my annoyance (annoyed because I actually knew that shops would close on Sunday but forgot about it) and decided to do the last remaining touristy things I could do given the grey, gloomy skies. We browsed more of the Vienna city streets, ate more cakes, enjoyed more coffee and ate a Weiner Würstel. We walked around Stadtpark (not for very long as it was cold), as mum and I had to settle a disagreement about the main statue in the park! She thought Mozart, I thought Strauss, of course I won! We also checked out the interior of Stephansdom (St Stephen's Cathedral), a Vienna landmark and built in the gothic style. I think by that stage we were slightly church-ed out though.
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| Street food in classy Wein! |
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| It was delicious :D |
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| Cakes galore! |
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| Loved the shop signs |
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| Chanel style window shopping |
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| Interior of Stephansdom |
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| Inside Stephansdom |
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| I never paid attention to the tiles on St Stephen's until I took this photo |
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| Golden Strauss Statue @ Stadtpark |
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| Stadtpark |
Next time I am in Vienna, I will be aiming to visit Belvedere Palace as a top priority! If I wasn't with mum and Dad this time, I probably would have skipped Hofburg and gone to Belvedere. At least I have a reason to visit Vienna for the 4th time in the future :)
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