We had a big day yesterday in Vienna yesterday, so I decided to combine our time in Vienna into one post. We woke up yesterday at about the same time as we docked in Vienna and it was looking like another warm day. We had breakfast and then embarked a bus to take us to the historical centre of the city, which was about 25 minutes away from where the cruise boats dock. The journey is a mixture of back streets, motorways and traffic lights. The old city exudes money and excess among the Hapsburg Palaces, gardens and the museum quarter show the affluence of a time past.
Vienna is Austria’s capital city, with just over two million inhabitants. Vienna is the cultural, economic, and political center of the country, the fifth-largest city by population in the European Union, and the most populous of the cities on the river Danube.
Prior to World War One, Austria-Hungary, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy between 1867 and 1918 and was the second-largest country in Europe after Russia. The Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary were separate sovereign countries but the finish of World War One brought to an end the alliance and the Hapsburg dynasty.
Today Vienna remains as a centre of culture and houses one of the four major offices of the United Nations.
Following our city tour, we stopped for coffee and cake. The coffee was so much better than what we’d been served in Germany. We then headed to Vienna’s fine art gallery, called the Albertini. They had and amazing collection of classic artists, including Renior, Monet, Picasso and some modern art as well.
We had a quiet afternoon because we both have the cold now and we wanted to be be fresh for the concert in the evening. While I am not an overt ballet or opera fan, one of the things I really wanted to do in Vienna was to attend a musical performance and as such we attended a mixed performance featuring all three of those things. The Opera performances we sprinkled in with the classical music pieces and the performers made it very entertaining. I knew many of the classical music pieces because my mother used to play some on the piano and my father was passionate about classical music. It was so nice to know that the memories of those times still resonated with me.
This morning, we wrapped up our time to Vienna with a visit to the Schönbrunn Palace which was the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers. It is a 1,441-room Baroque palace and is one of the most important architectural, cultural, and historic monuments in the country. The history of the palace and its vast gardens spans over 300 years, reflecting the changing tastes, interests, and aspirations of successive Habsburg monarchs. It owes much of its design elements to Versailles in France.
The journey there was again by bus, but with at least 6 river cruise ships docked, there were no less than 20 busses trying to take guests on tours. Luckily, we were first out.
The palace itself is amazing, with the rooms largely been preserved as they were when the Hapsburgs vacated Vienna in 1918. The rooms catalogue an interesting history and I now know (whether I wanted to or not) that in the 1700s people only bathed about twice a year and they would need to visit the ‘Monkey Man’ who had monkeys to pick off the fleas and eat them. Of course, aristocratic families had their own monkeys.
With that in mind, we have set sail again
Until tomorrow!
Rob's "Beats Working" Blog 
Love the bit about aristocratic families having their own monkeys!