One Day in Vienna

Today was our last full day in Europe and our goal was to tackle all of Vienna in a day.  Since we had a lay of the land from walking around last night, we got an early start to the morning and headed to St. Stephan's Cathedral (yes, we also saw a St. Stephen's in Budapest).  This church was more like the "typical" European Church, lots of stone and marble and very dark inside.  While it was pretty, we all agreed that the St. Stephan's in Budapest was much cooler.  This church felt like it had sold out a bit, with lots of tourist "attractions" inside.  The one thing that was pretty cool was you can hike up to the top of the bell towers for great views of the city. You had the choice of the North tower with the elevator or the South tower that included 343 spiral steps.  We opted for the South tower because we were told it had better views and we all felt like we could use a little exercise.  We made our way up the dark, narrow spiral staircase and were definitely huffing and puffing by the top.  That said, the view was definitely worth it.  After taking in the view we went back down the staircase - much easier going down than up!  After St. Stephan's we headed over to the Hofburg Palace Complex.  Hofburg palace was the home to the Hofburg family, who ruled over Europe for a number of centuries, starting back in the late 1200's.  It is huge - the main building has over 2600 rooms.  Now the complex is home to the Austrian president's office and a number of different museums.  In our "Vienna in a Day" guide, it suggested we see the silver collection, the Imperial Treasury  and the Imperial Apartments (Sisi Museum).  When we went to buy tickets we found out that there was an English speaking tour of the Sisi Museum at 2:00. We decided that might be worthwhile so we bought tickets.  Since we had some time to kill prior to our planned 1:00 tour of City Hall we decided to go through the Silver Collection ourselves.  It was pretty crazy, they showed all of the different types of place settings they used throughout the Hofburg regime.  The dishes and silver wear had so much detail, but I think the coolest part was probably the exhibits that showed what an actual table would look like.  The center pieces were crazy and there were more forks, knives and glasses than I would know what to do with!  Apparently the meals were 11-14 courses in this time so all of the cutlery and glasses had a purpose for each specific course.  After touring the Silver Museum portion we headed over to City Hall (Rathause) for our 1:00 tour.  It is a huge, gothic looking building that has lots of spires, the highest of which goes 102 meters in the air.  It was built between 1872 an 1883.  Back then there was a rule that no building could be higher than the highest cathedral.  To get around this, the architect put a statue on top of the highest spire who's fingers when just above the Cathedral.  The statue (they said it weighs several tons) is suspended on the top of this spire and has the ability to rock up to 10inches with wind.  It was definitely a cool building and we were glad we took the tour.  We hustled back to Hofburg for our 2:00 tour of the Sisi Museum.  The Sisi Museum shows a portion of the palace that  was home to Empress Elizabeth, one of the most famous Empresses of the Hofburg dynasty.  She ruled in the mid to late 1800's, until she was assinated in 1898.  Our tour guide was awesome - she spoke great English and gave us all sorts of interesting facts.  One of those facts was she told us there was a locked door between the Empresses quarters and her husband's quarters.  If he wanted to see her he had to knock and get permission.  Her area of the complex was by far the warmest as well, but only got up to about 64 degrees in the winter.  The rest of the palace only was able to be heated to about 39 degrees.  She was also ahead of her times in that she loved to exercise.  They showed her "gym" which included rings, a pull up bar and a wood thing you could climb.  I wonder of she could do a muscle up?!? :-)  After the museum, we realized that tour took too long and we wouldn't make it to the Opera house tour that started at 3:00.  We were disappointed but definitely ok with it because our tour guide was so great.  Since we were going to miss the Opera tour we decide to visit the Imperial Treasury while we were in the Hofburg Complex.  The Treasury contained many of the jewels of the Hofburg empire, including the crowns of the Holy Roman and Austrian emperors.  Some of the displays dated all the way back to the year 1000.  Crazy that something that old could still be in such great shape.  After seeing the jewels, we went to grab a quick bite to eat before we had to wait in line to get Opera tickets.  The Opera definitely deserves a post of its own, it was quite the experience!  Overall though we hit almost every item on the Vienna in a Day Guide so I'd say we were successful in our quest to get a feel for Vienna.  It is a really pretty city, but I must say I think we all thought Budapest was a little cooler, just because it was so different from every other European city any of us has ever been to.