A "meat market" with high culture. :)

The City Hall Food Circus with the City Hall in the back.

Today we got a late start, so we ended up heading right over to the "food circus" in Rathausplatz right outside the Vienna City Hall. From 11am until late at night, the plaza is full of food stands and people. There was also a gigantic movie screen hanging from City Hall with a few thousand folding chairs in front of it. According to Rick Steves, the city of Vienna sets this up every summer and plays broadcasts of opera performances, orchestra concerts and more every night - all for free to "promote culture" in the young people of Vienna. According to Rick Steves, "Officials know that the City Hall Music Festival is mostly a "meat market" where young people come to hook up, but many believe these people will develop an appreciation for classical music and high culture on the side." :) The food stalls themselves are different than any I have been to; the food is all served on real glass plates and glasses with metal silverwear - the only disposable things are the napkins. This gives the place a "classier" feel than most food courts. The food itself is mostly "ethnic" food, like Indian, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, etc. Gavin and I were craving Indian food, so we had some tasty chana masala and samosas. Gavin and I decided we wanted to go back this evening to watch the concert and experience the night life of thousands of people coming to mingle and watch the concerts.

After lunch, we headed over to Mariahhilfer Strasse, one of the main shopping drags in Vienna, only to find that every store was closed! The whole city, besides restaurants, completely shuts down on Sundays. Even most of the grocery stores were closed! We thought perhaps stores in the touristy area near Stephansplatz would be open, and we were right, but ONLY souvenir shops selling their array of magnets, keychains, t-shirts and touristy junk were open, none of the nice clothing shops we had admired yesterday were open. Instead, we went to a little cafe called Cafe Europa for some ice cream.

After ice cream, we went back to the apartment to try to figure out how Gavin's family would get to the airport - they had to be at the airport at 5am before the metro was running. We tried to call a couple taxi companies and got recorded messages in German and couldn't get a person on the phone. Gavin, Olive and I walked around for a while trying to find a taxi company, but he accidentally deleted his map, so we never found it. We finally stopped and asked a taxi driver waiting if there was a phone number we could call to get a taxi, and he pointed to one on his windshield. I called it from a pay phone, and thankfully got someone who spoke English. But by the time we got all this figured out, it was too late to go to the City Hall Music Festival. Sad!

Dark Chocolate gelato at Zanoni & Zanoni.

I tempered my sadness at missing the City Hall Music Festival with dessert. :) We went to a gelateria near our apartment named Zanoni and Zanoni - what INCREDIBLE gelato! The best we had on the entire trip! I had a Ferrero Rocher and a dark chocolate flavor. Dark chocolate gelato, which I have had before, is incredible - it is coffee-brown, the darkest ice cream I have ever seen Chocolate ice cream never looks like that in the states! Gavin, not a fan of dark chocolate, thinks I have questionable taste in ice cream. :) Thus, sugar-happy, we ended our last night in Europe.

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A torte-tastic day of cafe hopping. :)

This morning I decided we should do the Vienna city walk in our Rick Steves book to hit all the major sites. We started at the opera house, then checked out the WWII memorial and at once were hungry for lunch; we didn't get very far on the walk. :) (another late start this morning) We went into the gardens of the Hofburg Palace to have lunch at the Café Restaurant Palmenhaus, which was in a huge greenhouse at least three stories tall, with plants, trees and vines growing all the way up to the ceiling - a beautiful, sunny space! Gavin and I decided we had to come back at night, knowing it would be a completely different atmosphere in the dark.

The lovely Café Restaurant Palmenhaus, complete with indoor palm trees.

A note on Vienna in July and August - this is NOT a good time to visit Vienna; at the world's center for opera and classical music, one can't see an opera at the Staatsoper or the Volksoper. The opera houses all close for a summer break! I was really disappointed that I didn't get to see a performance, but Gavin and his non-opera-loving family were probably relieved... :)

Vienna's famous opera house: the Staatsoper.

After lunch we continued the city walk tour, heading down Kärtner Strasse passing St. Peter's Cathedral and Stephansdom. At this point, most of Gavin's family headed back to the apartment, but Gavin, Tyler and I stayed out. Between Stephansdom and the Hofburg palaces, we found ourselves near one of the most highly recommended dessert places in Vienna, Café Demel. I decided we must stop for dessert, so we walked inside, drooled over the many fresh tortes in the display, and picked a slice apiece. We then headed upstairs to get a table, and we had to wait almost 15 minutes! When we were finally seated, we had the waitress bring our cake and some wine. All the flavors were DELICIOUS! I had Ana's torte, which was chocolate piled upon chocolate with shaped milk chocolate instead of frosting, Gavin had an apple pie-ish torte, and Tyler had a strawberry torte. YUM! The cafe itself had a very "old elegance" feel - high ceilings, lots of chandeliers, wood tables both silky smooth and dented/scratch from years of use.

St. Peter's Cathedral at the end of the street.

Tyler and I eyeballing the delicious torte at Demel...

The beautiful upstairs of Demel, where we enjoyed our torte and wine. :)

After dessert, we ended the walk at Heldenplatz (Heroes' Square) in the Hofburg palace. Then I dragged us all to the Haus der Musik, a museum dedicated to the Vienna Philharmonic, the Viennese classical composers and also a scientific part about the nature of sound and hearing. The science part was really interesting - I got to test the highest pitch I could hear, listen to the "fastest" beat I could hear before my brain turned the beats into just one long tone, etc. Unfortunately, there were a ton of little kids running around and screaming into the mics at each station, so I finally lost patience and left the nature of sound section. :) At the end of the museum, there was a little Wii-like video game where one could "direct" the Vienna Philharmonic to classical Viennese music favorites like "The Beautiful Blue Danube," etc. The orchestra would supposedly follow the beat of your baton, and if you got all the way through they would applaud you. If you messed up, they all put down their instruments and make fun of you. :) Despite my year of conducting training in college, I failed miserably at this game. Not only could I not get the virtual orchestra to follow me, but the baton suddenly broke and I was left holding only the handle! I got booed by the Vienna Philharmonic! How embarrassing! :)

After working up an appetite conducting the Philharmonic, we decided to go cafe-hopping for dinner - having a drink and an appetizer at each place. We started at Sky Cafe, a cafe on the top floor of a building on Kärtner Strasse, where we thought we might get a nice view of Stephansdom. The smartly-dressed hostess gave us an obvious "you're-not-dressed-up-enough" look up and down, but still seated us anyway. I ordered wiener schnitzel for us all to share - I had had it on my last trip to Vienna, but everyone must try wiener schnitzel in Vienna. :) Wiener schnitzel is basically a pork tenderloin - breaded and deep fried, but really soft and tender. I think our waitress was also irritated that we didn't order more than that, but we had told the hostess that we only intended to order drinks and an appetizer... Snooty place overall, but the wiener schnitzel was good. :)

Sky Cafe on Kärtner Strasse at night.

The next cafe we "hopped" to was Cafe Sacher, home of the famous Sachertorte - a famous Viennese dessert of chocolate cake with apricot, but we didn't order it because I am not a fan of pairing apricot with chocolate, plus Rick Steves warned us that the torte is really dry... :) I instead had a delicious hot chocolate with homemade chocolate liquor and a homemade piece of chocolate on the side. (chocolate fix number 2 for the day... :) ) This cafe had a lovely, antique feel and a ton of tourists. :)

Tyler and I examining the menu at Cafe Sacher.

Last but not least, we headed back to the beautiful Café Restaurant Palmenhaus to end the evening. We were right that the atmosphere changed completely at night into a lovely, romantic restaurant with candles, low lights and lounge music. Thus we ended our evening, sipping wine and holding hands, enjoying a lovely Vienna night.

Cafe Restaurant Palmenhaus at night.

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Guten tag, Vienna.

This morning we left Prague and took a train to Vienna. The trip was about four hours, and we once again were packed like sardines into a small, cubicle sized compartment, this time with six seats facing each other across the compartment. We arrived in Vienna in midafternoon and quickly figured out the U-Bahn (Vienna's subway system) to get us to our apartment. We arrived in exactly the right corner, but we were unable to find the office where we were supposed to meet the apartment manager. We had to call her on a nearby pay phone, and we discovered that the office was actually in her home, while we had been searching for an actual office building. She showed us the apartment, then we settled in and got ready to go out for dinner.

For dinner I picked Plachutta Restaurant out of the Rick Steves book becuase he said it had really nice traditional Viennese cuisine. Gavin and I tried out Tafelspitz, which is basically a soup/broth with a big slice of beef some veggies and a large bone complete with marrow, all cooked together until the beef is completely soft and tender. I wasn't brave enough to try the marrow, which Tyler likened to "meat jello," but the rest of the dish was tasty. Our Tafelspitz was served with a bowl that appeared to contain applesauce. Olive was excited to have some applesauce, and put a big spoonful into her mouth. Imagine her surprised when it was not applesauce, but horseradish sauce... I also had some delicious Carpe Diem brand kombucha - I have never seen kombucha served at a restaurant before, but this brand is popular here, probably because it doesn't actually taste like kombucha; it was very sweet, not acidic. The extremely quick and efficient service at Plachutta was a welcome change from the generally über slow service at virtually every restaurant or bar we visited in Budapest and Prague.

After dinner we walked down Kärtner Strasse, a wide, pedestrian-only shopping street to Stephansplatz, where the beautiful St. Stephen's Cathedral towers above the plaza and horse carriages (complete with poop sacks hanging from the horses' behinds to collect any "droppings") wait to carry tourists through the streets of Old Town. Close to Stephansplatz we got to hear the caliber of street musicians in the classical music capital of the world. :) There was an amazing little quartet playing, a bass, cello, violin and hammered dulcimer. I had never heard of nor seen the hammered dulcimer before (I had to look it up online to see what it is. :) ), but it seems to be popular in street/restaurant bands here. Suddenly, it started raining and the prepared-for-anything quartet quickly covered the hammered dulcimer with a tarp and stood under umbrellas with their precious stringed instruments. We all quickly stepped under a tree, since none of us had umbrellas. Gavin's family decided they wanted to go back to the apartment, so they caught the nearby U-Bahn. Gavin and I went to a nearly souvenier shop and bought a cheap umbrella to share and continued our walk. The umbrella was so small we had to have our arms around each to both be under it. We walked to a little outdoor cafe called Cafe Europa and had dessert and warming chai lattes under the heaters in their outdoor umbrella-covered area. Then, snuggled under the umbrella to stay warm and dry, we headed back to the apartment to end our first night in Vienna.

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