Every Journey In Vienna Begins With 347 steps.

12th June 2012. Day one of Vienna.

Greg was master of ceremonies for Vienna so I spent most of the day feeling pleasantly surprised as he directed us here and there.

We caught the metro into the centre of the city remarkably easily and alighted directly underneath the main cathedral. We wandered in – it was similar to many we had already seen although weirdly they had covered the windows (plain, not stained glass) with coloured sheets of fabric, I guess to light it inside as if it was stained glass. Everywhere you turned inside the free section was something or other asking for money... I wasn't overly impressed to be honest, but maybe by this stage I'm becoming a bit 'big church'ed out.

Greg said never mind, we're going up the tower. We bought our tickets and went around the side of the church. Then we ascended 347 steps, going round and round. 

We had the pleasure of ascending at the same time as several classfuls of 9-11 year olds descended, which made for very challenging going in the narrow stairwell and have I mentioned before about children's lack of notice of those around them?

Anyway the climb was worth it, the views of Vienna were spectacular and a grand starting point for exploring the city. When we had had enough, we descended back down the steps, again fighting against children. Must have been field trip day in Vienna.

lego-esque patterns on the roof of the cathedral

Then we went to find a clock that apparently did amazing things at midday. We found the clock easily enough, but it was only 11.40. I told Greg not to worry, and made good use of the time by posting a postcard (watch the mailbox, St. Barnabas) and having a coffee at a nearby cafe. The clock was pretty cool and somehow really lame all at the same time. Nevertheless we enjoyed watching the 12 famous Austrian personages trotting through the clock's windows one by one to their very own theme tune.

Pretty statue thing near the clock. Also near where we had coffee.

The clock! The people travel behind the clock as the hour ticks by and then at 12pm all 12 people do the circuit over about ten minutes while theme music plays for each character.

The names of the people who appear on the clock, by hour.

Greg decreed it was lunch o'clock, otherwise we going to be in the middle of a museum when we got hungry. Noting the plethora of Japanese restaurants in Vienna, we decided to join the locals and have some sushi. Turned out to be complicated, there was a take out area and a sit down area, one was order at the counter, one sit down and wait to be served. And if you wanted to sit down, it wasn't enough to order food, you had to order a drink, which was rather odd. As it was the food was good, the drinks a bit of a ripoff but Greg enjoyed his 'jasmine tea' which couldn't be drunk without Avatar (last airbender) references abounding. It was also a satisfactory place for an Eye Drop Stop.

Greg and his Jasmine Tea.

Happily sushied we headed on. As it took us to where we wanted to go, we followed the guidebook's walking tour through some of the major pedestrian malls and squares of central Vienna, into the museum quarter. 

As we wandered, we decided to have a wee look in this church...

What a gem!

Note the poo-bags behind the horses.

Arriving at the museum we realised it wasn't what we had thought, and when we saw 'greek and egyptian antiquities' as the description we were instantly, unanimously going 'flag it'. We'd seen enough of that stuff this trip...

Plan B was the Albertina museum, currently exhibiting a collection entitled Monet bis Picasso (Monet to Picasso). We walked through a nice park to the museum.

When we got to the museum we went straight past the permanent stuff and up to the exhibition. The exhibition was great, as was the audioguide, giving us a pretty good overview of various art movements from impressionism through to abstraction, with explanations as to the key features of each movement and why it was important. Greg felt like he was getting it a bit more by the end and he liked the impressionist paintings that involved the squares of colour exactly the same size that close up looked blurry and indisctinct but the further away you stood the more the picture appeared. There was some really great stuff there and I was desparate to buy the catalogue so I could remember what I had seen and the names of the artists etc. but would you believe they had sold out!! So disappointed.

We breezed through the rest of the collection after. The permanent 'old' collection was shut for some reason, but the restored palace rooms were open for viewing (breezed through very quickly as they were really similar to the Residenz rooms in Salzburg), as was the contemporary collection. It was cool to see some modern art. I liked quite a lot of it, but heaps of it was abstract so Greg was less interested (especially the entirely black painting... which I'm pretty sure is quite a famous one, if only notorious for being a painting 'that anyone could do so how is it art?'). There was this amazing huge black and white picture of an asian child that I was sure was a photograph but it was actually charcoal. I have a lot of trouble remembering the name of the artists... I should take notes!

The Residenz rooms were quite lovely...

I wasn't supposed to take this photo...

Cultured up we head out again into the evening. We were pretty tired by this time so we decided to head to a guidebook recommended place for tea and then on to home. The place was apparently a staple restaurant for the Viennese and we were a mixture of both over and underwhelmed by it. The prices were steepish, but the piece of schnitzel that came out took up the entire place! Craving vegetables I was frustrated to find that both the salad and the potatoes had been slathered in a sauce that tasted to me the way horse poo smelt (which was a recent smell due to all the horse drawn carriages around town with their attached 'poo bags') which despite my best efforts I could not bring myself to eat it! Greg didn't have a problem and gobbled it all down.

I had discovered that Demel cafe's were also a chain and existed in Vienna too. However our attempt to stop there for dessert on the way home was thwarted by the fact that it closed at 7pm. So we headed back to the hostel and took it easy for the evening.