Travel Blog: A Short Stay in Vienna...

....prior to another short stay in Vienna, but that won't be until the weekend!

The weather turned out to be better than forecast for our drive back to Vienna. As the navigation system in the car estimated, it took us about 4 hours total. After a little extra time getting to the hotel because we couldn't tell just how soon we needed to make turns on the narrow, close together streets, we finally got to the Ritz-Carlton which is on the world-famous Ringstrasse.

We thought we would have to drive the car all the way back to the airport to return it, but the concierge in the hotel called Avis for us and discovered that we would only need to drive a few minutes farther along the Ringstrasse and deliver it to the Avis office in an underground parking garage. Great!! But then we had to get there. Not that it was a problem driving on the Ringstrasse, the problem was figuring out exactly where to turn to get into the parking garage! Nevertheless, once we had dropped the car off, we walked back to the hotel, as it turns out, almost duplicating part of one of our walks from two weeks ago.

As we only had the rest of the afternoon, by this time it was already after 4:00, and the next day, we thought we would take a walk around the area of Schubertring, where we had not been before. The Ringstrasse in Vienna goes all the way around the city centre, almost like an oversized traffic circle. It is a one-way street, and just so people know what part of town they are in, sections of the street have different names - Schubertring (near the concert hall and University of Music), Schottenring (near the Scottish church), Opernring (near the opera house), Burgring (near Hofburg and other palaces). It really makes sense when you think about it, but takes some getting used to!

We had dinner at the Dstrikt Steakhouse, the hotel's restaurant. And after all that veal and pork and sausage and schnitzel, it certainly was great to have a really good steak!!

Burrata and really sweet cherry tomatoes

Larry and his steak - with truffle fries!

Monica and her steak and grilled veggies

Dessert - an Austrian specialty called
Schmarrn - strips of very fluffy
pancake with ice cream and berry sauce

Oh, and in the come-down of the century, the toilet in our room was fully manual! We weren't quite sure what to do after the previous two hotels. Of course, we initially had a problem even finding the bathroom! We looked around the room and couldn't find an obvious door, but there was a really interesting floor-to-ceiling artwork on one wall. Okay, that's nice - but where's the bathroom? It took a few minutes for us to figure out that the artwork was part of a sliding door and our bathroom was on the other side.

So on Tuesday we did our walk around another part of Vienna, starting at the Stadtpark and the famous statue of Johann Strauss, 'the Waltz King'.

Johann Strauss

Johannes Brahms

We strolled by Hofburg Palace and St. Stephans Cathedral again, and found our way to the parks around the Burgring.

The memorial to those lost in the Plague

Hofburg Palace

In one of the nearby parks

In the Voksgarten, the Peoples' Park,
where many of the rose bushes are planted
and dedicated by citizens to commemorate
people or important events.

A view of the Votiv Church spire through
some of the dedicated rose bushes

One of the two palace buildings in Maria Theresien Platz. These
are now the Museum of Modern Art and the Natural History Museum.

One of the more interesting places in Vienna is the Naschmarkt, or literally the 'Snacking Market', which has been in the same place, down the centre boulevard of one of the main streets out of the city centre, for over 100 years. There are stalls selling fruit, vegetables, spices, even some with meat and sausages, but the highest proportion by far are the small restaurants selling every kind of cuisine. Quite an interesting place, but busy at lunchtime!

And still on the way back to the hotel, we found the very large and impressive Karlskirche, dedicated to St. Charles Borromeo, in German St. Karl Borromaeus.

After all that walking, we thought we were entitled to a bit of relaxation, so we visited the hotel pool, down on the spa level. Very nice; and just like the pool at the Werdenfelserei in Garmisch, it is entirely stainless steel. We'd never seen this anywhere before; must be a new thing - at least it would make maintenance pretty easy!

If you look closely, you'll see Larry relaxing on the
Jacuzzi 'bed' down at the end. Similar to the one
in Garmisch, the water bubbles through in between the
stainless steel rungs you lay on top of.

We ate at the Dstrikt Steakhouse one more time, just because last night's meal was so good! This time we had their Chateaubriand, and it was just as delicious as any we'd had at home.