The travel blog returns! The Vienna Edition

We are in Vienna!

Michael is "attending" the International Astronomical Union annual meeting this week, so we have hopped the continental US and then the pond to do a little science and a lot of exploring! We will be here for a week, and so far it's gotten off to a good start.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon, after an overnight layover in Paris. We are staying in a hotel a little ways out of the city center (but right by the conference center) on an island in the Danube River. We spent the evening just walking around the river banks and parks. Picnicking seems to be a popular pasttime here, as the lawns all along the river were full of people enjoying the summer heat, or trying to escape it by having a swim or paddling out in a boat. We also noticed an awful lot of people with ice cream cones and followed their trail back to an absolutely delicious gelato shop, which also seemed to be the only restaurant-like place open on Sunday evenings, so for dinner we had ice cream and zero regrets.

The Danube river seems to be the place to be on warm summer afternoons.

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This morning we took the train into the city center to get our bearing and see what there is to see. Vienna is a beautiful city, and in the early morning (9am seems to be early) the touristy spots were still pretty empty. Many of the popular areas are pedestrian only, which makes walking around the city very pleasant.

Stephenplatz early in the morning

St Stephen's Cathedral

 We walked over the to Hoffburg Palace, a big complex of buildings that were the seat of the Austrian Empire until the early 1900s and are the definition of imperial splendor. We visited the Imperial Treasury, which has some absolutely stunning pieces. There were lots and lots of jewels and gold and swords, but Michael and I both agreed that the most impressive were the Liturgical Vestments of the Order of the Golden Fleece, which are these ornately embroidered robes and alter coverings. The embroidery is so detailed it looked like painting with gold and silk. They took ten years to make, and the workmanship was amazing. I have no pictures of that in particular, because they didn't want camera flashes damaging the pieces, and I didn't blame them. 

Hoffburg Palace was the primary residence of the Hapsburg Dynasty, and one of two main palaces in the city.

Pearl and gold embroidered christening gowns for the Hapsburg family. The detail was amazing.  Now multiply that by like 100 and you get the vestments.

So many crowns, so many jewels.

"Two bouquets of flowers". Libby just needs to find an dynasty to hire her as a jewelsmith and she can make fantastical things to her heart's content.

We then headed off to the Natural History museum, both because we both like that sort of thing and also because it was getting pretty hot outside. We then discovered why Europe struggles so much with heat waves... nothing is air conditioned. So although slightly cooler than outside in the sun, the historical part of the museum was also pretty warm, which was a bummer because that's where they had all the rocks. We also saw a neat exhibit about the European Space Agency mission Rosseta, which flew to, orbited and sort of landed on a comet. 

I was very impressed by the Austrian National Museum of Natural History's rock and mineral collection and display. There were four rooms just full of samples! Unfortunately, they also weren't air conditioned, so we skimmed through there quickly.

We also went to "Time Travel Vienna - A History Tour" which was delightful and campy. It involved a lot of animatronic figures and 4D movie experiences. We both loved it, and have no idea how to actually explain it, so you will just have to go to Vienna and see for yourself.

We ended our excursion with hot dogs in Stephenpatz, and by hot dogs I mean sausages shoved into bread rolls almost as long as my forearm and stuffed with mustard and sourkraut. They were pretty delicious, and I felt very viennese sitting by the fountain eating these. Although I'd bet an actual Viennese would take offense to that because I wasn't sitting at one of the many open air cafes with a coffee wash it down. There are more days left in this trip.

Enjoying a Huhnerfleischwurstchen (chicken sausage hot dog). I'd already eaten half of it...