Vienna

Surely a grander European city does not exist! Statues, columns, and gilt around every corner and more seemingly more palaces than royalty. We arrived at the train station around 3pm and caught 2 subways to our hotel, the 25Hours Hotel near the Museum Quarter. Since I had neglected to eat lunch, we went off to one of Christmas markets, on Spittleberg Strase. Rather than on a plaza, this market stretched a couple blocks along of street of trendy shops and restaurants. I got a sleeve of Belgian fries with a mix of cocktail sauce (not ketchup!) and some other white mayonaisse based sauce. Across the street we got hot drinks - the housemade punch with mango juice, ginger, and white wine for me and hot apple juice for Jake. We ended up eating dinner at a very busy Italian restaurant called IRagazzi with decent, not great, Italian food. From there we walked over to another close by Christmas market on Maria Theresien-Platz before returning to our hotel.

Spittleburg market

Maria Teresienplatz market

On Saturday we started the day off with visiting the Nachtmarkt. We got breakfast at one of the many cafes at the market. The Vienesse breakfast consisted of a croissant, coffee, orange juice, a soft boiled egg, and rolls with ham and cheese. The market had a lot of Turkish vendors selling olives, feta, salted and candied nuts, dried fruits and baklava. They are always offering tastes of their products hoping to draw you in. There were numerous spice vendors, candy shops, butchers, bakers, and fruits and vegetables. On Saturday there is also a flea market of mostly people selling antiques. There was a surprising disregard for the snow covering records and books by some vendors making me think they weren't worth much!

Nachtmarkt flea market in the snow

 From the Nachtmarkt, I headed to the Albertina, while Jake went to the war museum. The Albertina is half an historic palace and half art museum. The historic rooms were quite stunning. I was particularly taken with the variety of intricate parquet floor designs and beautiful silk drapes and wall coverings. The art collection was equally impressive with a special exhibit featuring many of Michleangelo's drawings of the human figure and a collection of art from Impressionists to Surrealists. They have a large print collection in part because one of the royals who inhabited the place had amassed a formidable collection. I walked along some of the shopping streets afterwards searching for a couple items since I figured many of the stores would be closed on Sunday. There is a wide variety of international brands and local brands and the streets were busy with shoppers. 

One of my favorites but I forgot to take a photo of the description with the artist's name!

Meeting back at the hotel around 3pm, we headed for the closest cafe, Cafe Raimundo. Jake had a decent goulash and I got the fried chicken fingers on lettuce with potato salad. The fried chicken was both moist and crispy, but the lettuce was rather drowned in balsamic vinegar. We finished our meal sharing a piece of sacher torte, perhaps slightly better than the piece we had had at the Sacher Cafe in Salzburg.

After resting up at the hotel, Jake and I went out to the largest Christmas market at City Hall (Rathaus) plaza. This market features a large ice rink with different branches around islands of trees. There was a whole children's section with a double decker merry-go-round, ferris wheel, and mini train. It had stopped snowing by evening, but was still cold and damp, so we took a cursory tour around before heading back to the warmth of our hotel. 

Cashew and chocolate baklava from the Nachtmarkt (our dinner Saturday night)

Tree filled with hearts

Entrance to the market

 Sunday brought much better weather with the sun appearing for several hours and warming up to the low 40sF. We got a late start but headed into the heart of the city having felt like we hadn't seen that many of the historic city center sites the day before. We first tried for breakfast at one of the better known cafes, but were told there was a wait only after checking our coats. We picked our coats back up and headed out coming across the just-opened doors of the Falstaff. We were the first people there and they had an excellent breakfast menu. I got the smoked salmon and avocado plate for less than 10 euros. I got a bite of Jake's pain au chocolate which was excellent and hot out of the oven. They also had fresh-squeezed orange juice. Afterwards we strolled around getting a glimpse of the interior of St. Stephen's cathedral while the choir was singing and of another church as the organ was playing. We passed lots of tourist groups and the horse-drawn carriages were busy.  Around noon we came across the Aida Cafe and stopped there for slices of cake and more coffee.

An old building in Vienna

Gargoyles on the cathedral

The cathedral's organ

Esterhazy and Chocolate truffle cake at Cafe Aida

    I ended my touring by visiting the Christmas market on Freyung St. while Jake went to the train station to get our tickets sorted out for returning to Munich tomorrow.