Vienna, Round Two

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

After yesterday’s stroll among the Hapsburg Palaces in the city center, we set out this morning to see where they went for “relief” during the summer months.  Just a few subway stops from the Hofburg complex sprawls the 1441-room Schonbrunn Palace, the royals’ summer getaway.  Our tour covered only about 25 of the rooms, but that was more than enough to demonstrate that there was no roughing it at the summer digs.  While the scale of the private rooms was much smaller than that in the grand halls, it was still far over the top, as most of these places are.  The Palace Gardens are now a public park, the centerpiece of which is an enormous Neptune fountain.  The park is extensive and contains other fountains, specialized gardens, several out buildings, long, tree-lined allees, and even the city zoo.  The whole effect -- inside and out -- seems quite like that of Versailles, and raises the same questions of wretched excess and more that continue to the present day.

After lunch in the Palace Gardens, we took the U back to Karlsplatz, walked past the grand Opera House and Albertina again, and on to Josefsplatz, in the Hofburg, where we entered the Augustinian Church, the Imperial family’s parish church, and site of their weddings, baptisms, and other important events.  A closed crypt holds urns containing the hearts of 54 members of the royal family.  (Their bodies are in the nearby Capuchin Church and their entrails in the Cathedral of St. Stephen – an effort to spread the wealth?!?)

Because it’s always important to have photos of the same place in varying light (Claude Monet knew this!), we returned to Stephanslatz for a few more shots of the cathedral.

Having given some study to our transit maps, we devised a way to cobble together a Ring Road circuit of the inner city using two tram lines.  We also did a bit of it on foot, stopping to walk along the large plaza with a central monument to Empress Maria Teresa, flanked by the Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Science and Natural History.  We also stopped in the Burggarten for a look at a monument dedicated to Mozart; it overlooks a lawn with flowerbeds in the form of a treble clef.  At the Volkspark and the neo-classical Parliament, we bordered Tram 1 to complete our circuit.

We decided to continue back to the Prater, the huge park at the tram’s terminus, where we walked along the tree-shaded Hauptallee to the Wurstelprater amusement park.  The park’s most well-known feature is the Giant Ferris Wheel, the Riesenrad.  In operation since 1897, instead of seats, large cabins slowly make their rotation above the river and the city. The Riesenrad, featured in Orson Welles’ The Third Man, is perhaps as much a symbol of Vienna as the Cathedral. 

Two stops on the tram brought us back to our apartment, a Radler (beer and carbonated lemonade) on our terrace, and an end to our Viennese wanderings. 

Tomorrow, we’ll head to the mountains and lakes of Austria, swapping out the manmade grandeur of Vienna for some natural beauty.