VIENNA FOR CHRISTMAS

Wednesday, December 22

Arrived at 9.45 after a flight with BA, and having had our Christmas celebration with Peter and Mary. We’re staying at the Tourotel Mariahilf which is comfortable – large room and large bathroom and very good heating! It’s good that you can open the windows when it gets too hot!

Thursday, December 23

Started off the day with a buffet breakfast that set us up for lots of cold and sightseeing! We decided to walk into town to get our bearings, and on the way it started to snow! By the time we got to the Staatsoper (Opera House) I had the perfect excuse to buy an umbrella! Lots of artists (musical type) there who try to flog you tickets for evening performances – all quite legitimate and it seems to be an expected part of their craft/art. We decided to take a city tour to get ourselves oriented as the walk in hadn’t solved a lot of problems. That was great in giving the idea of the Ring Roads around the old city, and the major landmarks. After the tour it was snowing quite consistently, though it wasn’t cold enough for it to settle on the ground – anyway gave the perfect excuse to drop into the Sacher Hotel which is a major Viennese landmark and the origins of the famous Sacher Tortr. There we had a lovely lunch (though Len’s sausage/Frankfurt was a bit sparse!). Of course had to have some Sacher Torte – and it was truly delicious. Snow stopped during lunch so then we walked up through the Inner City to St Peter’s Church (a very gilded Baroque Church) and St Stephen’s, probably the best known place in Vienna. Wandering through the old streets was magic, but by 4 we needed a refreshing gluhwein and punch to warm up the inner and outer self. By the time we were set to head home, all the Christmas lights were on, making the streets a veritable wonderland, so instead of going home we went to the Christmas market in the Town Hall Square. What a great family atmosphere, and so colourful. Right next door is the Kunsthistorisches Museum, a wonderful museum of art and artistic objects that also is staging an exhibition of Goya paintings. between Goya, Titian and velasquez etc we were very cultured by the end of nearly two hours – and very warm, too. A very pleasant meal back at the hotel, with a very nice Austrian white wine was the end to a very white Christmassy day.

Friday, December 23

First thing on the agenda was to go to the Practice Session of the Lippizaner Horses at the Imperial Palace, so it was an early start and breakfast across the road at a delightful bakery that has been operating there since 1885. It’s a real Viennese place – great coffee, great bakery and the paper supplied for you to linger over – pity about the German type! After 90 minutes of the horses (and how they train and love them was easy to see) we picked up our tickets for Christmas day mass at the palace, where we’ll also hear the Vienna Boys Choir. The Imperial Palace is a huge complex with so much to see and do there. We saw the Treasury and the Imperial Apartments where they’ve made the assassinated Empress Elizabeth into something of a cult figure. The most unexpected and most moving parts of the day, though, were two impromptu choral performances, one by a tenor and one by a group of 30 or so young people, outside the Imperial Apartments. The sound was truly glorious and quite moving.

We’d anticipated getting to Schonnbrun, the Summer Palace, too, but by the time we arrived (spent too much time with the Empress) it was almost closing time for the palace. What we hadn’t known about, though, was the very upmarket Christmas Market in the Palace, and the wonderful setting of the market, the lights, and the giant Christams tree. What a fairlyland, wonderful setting, and it gave a wonderful sense of the ‘wonder’ of the Christmas pageant. having seen snow and seen the Schoonbrun with its lights and tasted the warming gluhwein again, we really feel we’ve experienced a European Christmas.