Eventually we got on the tram to Sudbahnhof, where we got off yesterday and stumbled upon the Imperial Hotel, where the Imperial Torte was invented. We stopped in to have torte for breakfast... It was delicious, marzipan and chocolate and almonds. Yum! Running commentary by Emma about the cute, young waiter and her change made me almost cry with laughter!
We found a concert cafe after breakfast, but after the cake we weren't ready for more... So we got on a tour bus to learn more about the city and where we got lost walking last night...
What we learnt in the bus: Vienna has 1.6 million people and some of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen! It is tidy and clean and well cared for; it has 2800 parks!
This tour had a lot of information which explained what we had walked passed last night... Turns out the big building we walked passed last night was the Hofburg Palace, which houses the Imperial Silverware museum. The park behind it had the Mozart statue in it... The statue between the two museums was of Maria Theresa, who was Empress of Austria ... A while ago ...!
It also played traditional Austrian music like the waltz. This was funny as Emma had danced to a lot of this music and thus spend much of the ride doing dance movements...
We also drove past the Hunterwasserhaus, and learnt a little about the man behind the crazy buildings: he was born in 1928 and was influential in the development of the Prater area. He spent a lot of time in New Zealand and did the toilets in Kawakawa; and he's buried there!
The bus took us to the Prater ferris wheel, which featured in the Orson Wells film 'The Third Man' which I haven't seen but was voted film of the century in 1999 and Em's studied it a lot. Thus, it was imperative that we came here!
I'm glad we did, because the view up on the big ferris wheel was spectacular! We could see all of the old city, with it's towers and spires... Also, Emma sung the Harry Lime theme dog the whole time, however as she only knew the first four bars, it was a little funny as a lot repetitive... Oh well, the shoe fit!
Once down, we went to a little hotdog stand and went to sit in the sunlight on the grass infront of the ferris wheel. The hotdog was delicious, the company was great and it was very relaxing...
The plan from there was clear: we got an ice cream (Em's was called bum bum!) to accompany our walk to see the 'blue Danube!' again, my map-reading skills left a little to be desired when we ended up walking the longer of the two roads to get there... However, once there and strolling along the river, it was nice and a lot bigger than I had expected.
Once back in the city (we successfully caught the U-bahn back to Stephansplatz) we went into the St Stephans Cathedral, which is right in the middle of the city. It is beautiful, gothic and very dark. Also, it only has one tower, as the north tower was never finished. We decided to walk up the south tower to the 'watchmans room' - 343 stairs and 67 meters up the smallest spiral staircase! We got a little claustrophobic and the walk was made harder with Em cracking jokes the whole way: Me 'think of how cool this is, some people can't do this' Em 'ohhhhh poor then, can't walk up this deliciously sweaty stairwell!' and so on.
The view from the tower was awesome, there were four windows so you could see all directions of Vienna, back to Prater and the ferris wheel, to the other spires around the old city, and out to the greater city area. Also, the roof of the church was very colorful and made for some nice photos :)
Once we had successfully seceded the horrid spiral staircase (which was so much worse going down!!!) we true to do a little bit of shopping, by when we realised this may involve more stairs, we flagged the idea and went back to the hotel to get ready for the concert! I wanted I go for an evening walk at dusk back to where the bus had driven; down Dr-Karl-Luger-Ring and Burgring (part of the ring road around inner-city Vienna). These streets are home to the Rathaus (town hall), House of Parliament and Hofburg Palace, and Museum Quarter (the Fine Art museum an Natural History museums face each other, and are very majestic buildings).
It was very fun to be a tourist today!
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