Purplelake: Day 12-13 – Jul 31-Aug 1, 2019 Vienna, Austria

Vienna – This word immediately conjures up the images of elegance, sophistication, high society, culture, classical music, & waltz. This is exactly what we discovered when we arrived after driving 4 hours from Prague. Being the capital of tiny Austria, Vienna is not big by any means (only less than 3 million population in metro area). It would stretch your imagination now but this was once the center of the Europe and its most influential empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ruled by the famous Habsburg dynasty. It is a fun geography fact that Vienna is further east than Prague even though Austria is considered as “Western Europe” and Czechia is classified as “Eastern Europe”. In a sense, Vienna still wields some prestige in hosting the headquarters of many international organizations like OPEC.

Our hotel, Radisson Royal Park, is in a very quiet park-like neighbourhood. We were upgraded to a giant suite overlooking the park with a huge bedroom and dual bathrooms. The hotel was also equipped with both a wet steam sauna and dry sauna which we took full advantage of. Public transportation in Vienna was extremely efficient and convenient, either by bus, subway, or trams. Since German is the official language, we often felt like we were back in Germany again.

Large sitting room in our hotel suite

Super king-size bed in bedroom

Huge bathroom with shower installed behind the tub

Welcome gifts from hotel

Vienna is a compact city for exploration. Most of the Old Town is encircled by the Ring Road with the center being the imposing St. Stephan’s Cathedral and the busy pedestrian plaza Stephansplatz. Although it sits next to the Danube River, I found it odd that Vienna did not take full advantage to incorporate the river into the city design like many other European cities such as Budapest. We started our walk at the Vienna State Opera. As expected in a city with such a distinguished classical music tradition, there were touts everywhere selling various concert tickets to tourists like us. More than any other cities, Vienna had played host to musical geniuses like Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, & Mahler throughout its history. Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and other similar organizations are all world renowned for their performances. Unfortunately, since the regulars also had to take summer breaks from their performances, we were left only with “tourist” concerts to choose from.

Various international shops lined the pedestrian street leading to the cathedral in the center. One local shop standed out in its offering: Sachertorte. It is the creation of a pastry chef, Franz Sacher, and consists of a dense chocolate cake with thin layer of apricot jam on top and coated with special proprietary chocolate icing. The original cakeshop selling this famous Vienna cake was still there and was doing brisk business when we visited. Close to the city center, the street widened into the Stephansplatz plaza and there was the imposing St. Stephan’s Cathedral. This cathedral was started in 1137 and finished in 1160 first as a small church. The city kept on expanding it until 1511 to force the recognition from the pope and the subsequent installation of its own archbishop. We found a good restaurant to enjoy an authentic Wiener schnitzel dinner among the side streets in the shadow of the cathedral.

Vienna State Opera

Albertina Museum

On the terrace of Albertina Museum

Graben Street

Sacher Cake Shop

Sachertorte comes in all sizes and packaging

They are quite expensive

It is served with a scope of unsweetened whip cream

Crowded Stephansplatz. Notice the modern hotel on right? It had to jump through loops for building permits since the whole Vienna Old Town is UNESCO listed

St. Peter's Catholic Church on Graben Street

Sign of Holy Roman Empire on the roof of St. Stephan's Cathedral

Open piano on Stephansplatz

Night view of St. Stephan's Cathedral

Local Viennese cuisine - Schnitzel & dumpling

Next morning, we paid tribute to the center of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Hofburg Palace and the museum dedicated to its most famous resident, Empress Elisabeth (better known as Sissi). Long before Lady Diana, Empress Sissi was also an unhappy woman thrusted into public spotlight after marrying Emperor Franz Joseph I at the age of 16. She became more withdrawn after the death of her only son and travelled widely. She would be assassinated later in 1898. Sissi was well known for her beauty and her rigorous beauty routines such as soaking her long hairs with eggs and cognac once every two weeks, plus taking cold shower every morning and olive oil bath at night to firm up her skin! The display of all the imperial silver and porcelain collections was also impressive. We were really intrigued by the display of beautifully folded dining napkins. They claimed it is a well-kept secret even to this date how to fold the unique royal pattern using the serving napkin.

Elegant facade of Hofburg Palace

Part of the Imperial porcelain collection

Can you imagine they used all these to serve royal dinner in the past?

Empress Sissi - one of the most beautiful women lived

This is the full set up for dinner service

The signature royal fold of napkin representing Habsburg Dynasty- still a secret today

Personally, I think this fold is way more difficult!

Inside courtyard of Hofburg Palace

St. Stephan's Cathedral

Delicate stone carvings adorning the front entrance to the cathedral

Tower of the St. Stephan's Cathedral

Inside of St. Stephan's Cathedral

Doing a tram tour around the Ringstrasse ring road is an easy albeit time-consuming way to sightsee around Vienna. We jumped on one tram to do one half of the circle and transferred to another tram to complete the circle. At the end, we were overloaded with all the building names around the ring. We came away with the feeling that although Vienna is as advertised – elegant, classic, beautifully Baroque, there is nothing unique that stands out and grabs you. It feels like vanilla ice-cream – nice, standard, but nothing special.

To celebrate Yiling’s birthday today, we settled for (with her approval) Chinese take-out foods and a bottle of good German wine in our hotel room with Larry and Agnes! After dinner, we headed out to our concert at the Vienna Concert House. We were surprised the concert was a sold-out event with many tour groups booking blocks of seats. I guess this is a must-do event for every tourist!