Gail sleeps in while I sort of map things out for the day. We catch breakfast at the Mann bakery downstairs, just outside our door. Then we wander over to the U-Bahn metro station and I buy us 48 hour passes. We take line 6 to line 4 up three stops to Naschmarkt, and we lose the entire morning here. It is the biggest, longest outdoor food (80%) and trinket/junk (20%) market I have ever seen, and everyone, EVERYONE is offering samples. Falafels, olives, cheese, stuffed peppers, chicken roasted or raw, olive oil, wines, balsamic vinegars, spices, pickles in a brine barrel, nuts, chocolate, baked goods, roasted meats, fishes, more falafel... I am getting totally stuffed just walking through. At 13:00 we take a break for wine & water just to rest our stomachs! Every kind of food and spice you can imagine, even cooked dishes, or fresh pasta ready to take home and put in the pot. We are definitely NOT making any progress at seeing all the historic, music, art, castles and building stuff, but we are eating our way through Vienna and it is wonderful.
We rolled our way out of the market at last and about a kilometer over to the museum quarter. Here it started to get impressive. The museum buildings and grounds, like a park, so perfectly manicured with fountains and statues placed just... so. People picnicking in the shade, in bikinis tanning on the sunny grass, playing soccer; benches full of people chatting, every walk has couples strolling arm in arm. Then the buildings, old, stone, ornate with statues and gold gilt, and massive, so huge on a scale it is hard to describe. Think of Washington DC, the capitol, the monuments, they would fit here but not look so overwhelming like they do in DC. Here they would fit in naturally, the Lincoln Monument would look nice in a pool of reflecting water as a lawn ornament for the REALLY BIG Hofburg Palace. I mean it is a real problem even trying to photograph these buildings, I can move to the farthest away point in the park and get about half the building in, and then I have to include so much sky, or I can try to break it down into individual pieces that add up to capture the whole essence, but as I start in on that there are just so many pieces, and as we walk the building unfolds before us, revealing a new statue, trim, seal, column, gold leaf or trim. Did I mention the fountains and statues? The shaped bushes, the flowers planted in patterns? And it is not just one building, it goes on and on. I hear the palace has 2400 rooms? Well, my head is on a swivel as I walk, and we finally work our way around the buildings, through the last garden, down a street and turn a corner into a pedestrian shopping district, the street wider than many European squares. Maybe it is a square, but is designated a street.
We find a bakery, Demel, where you can go in the kitchen and see them making fresh apfel strudel. So we sit and have some. Warm, not too sweet, just the right amount of cinnamon, apples not too tart, and the pastry crust just so delicate and crispy. A light covering of powdered sugar finished it off. Moving on, more ornate buildings, big cathedral, huge cathedral, gigantic cathedral. (Exactly how many giant churches do you need in one city anyway? I have wondered this all through Europe. It is kind of like WalMarts in the US. Tell me it is just too damn much trouble to have to drive 30 miles to go to a WalMart? I guess it is too much trouble to go more than three blocks to church.) Stores: Gucci, Versace, Louis Vitton, Tiffanys, and tucked in between the Tabak, the Farmecia, and lo and behold, the Manner store! Manner wafers are my favorite little (sweet) snack here in Europe, and here is a store selling nothing but Manner! One jumbo size is as big as a table top. Won't fit in my carry on. Damn. We grab a few small size, then split up for an hour, Gail to shop, me to climb the St. Stephan's cathedral south tower, 350 steps in a tight spiral. I hit it just before closing, the ticket guy looks at me skeptically, so I slap down my €3 and am on top in under ten minutes, enjoy gazing on the city below, snap some photos and am back down in under 25 minutes. The ticket guy looks at me. "Keine problem." I shrug on my way out the door.
Gail and I meet up at a café for cold water, then set off. It is now 19:00 and the city is just coming alive, the streets more crowded, evening performers out (right now I am listening to a great band: accordion, clarinet, bass and violin) the cathedral bells are tolling, the single men are trolling for the young women slowly changing over from flip-flops and jeans to high heels and short short skirts. The sun is down but it's still light and the first lights are on. We have one more day here in Vienna, and so we are going to have to think through what to see and what to skip. There is the Gustav Klimt art collection, the wine region inside city limits, Schönbrunn Palace, Historisches Museum, the Opera, Danube River, more streets to wander...
Really, this trip easily could go on another week, month, year.
Since we ate street food all day, we decided to get a nice dinner. We found Danieli Ristorante & Osteria (wine bar). Good wine by the glass, no house wine tonight. We had a deep red Barbera, and the usual mineral wasser mit gas. I got an appetizer of lightly roasted veal beef with lemon mustard, chanterelle mushrooms and tomatoes. For dinner Gail had Caprese pizza, and I had the house dinner (at a great price too since it is the house specialty), spaghetti with a great sauce and a lobster tail. Wish I knew what is in that sauce. An hour later I can still taste it... ahhhhh. It rained about two minutes during dinner, just enough to cool off and feel good. Then, just as we were leaving it started to drizzle a little more. We just walked, ducking under awnings, overhangs, looking in closed store windows and admiring the cathedrals all lit up.
We found an old traditional Viennese coffee shop, the kind Freud, Lenin, Trotsky and Loos hung out in and debated. Café Leopold Hawelka. So we ducked in, ordered two coffees and Kuchen (cake) and read the International Herald Tribune (NY Times). Like all good coffee houses from the 1800s, this one has free WiFi! I wonder if Freud used to email Jung, "Hey Carl, did I tell you about the cigar? ROTFLMAO!!!"
The old wood floor creaks, the old wood chairs rasp across that floor, the dark dark red paint and wood paneling. Scattered conversations... wait! Is someone plotting a revolution? No, just two guys trying to pick up a couple girls... an "author" uh-huh...
We walk out to the metro about midnight, just 100 meters away. It is line 3! Score! We hop on and three stops later are back in our home neighborhood.