Vienna: Days 2-4

Day two of the vacation was probably Jon's favorite day. We started with breakfast at another cafe. [I could really get used to Vienna's cafe culture]. The main event of the day was the Vienna Philharmonic. Jon was not about to drag me to a 3-hour opera even though Vienna's opera is world-famous so this was the next best thing. I may or may not have had trouble keeping my eyes open. This is heresy to Jon, but it was warm in the concert hall, I was jet-lagged, and the music was just begging to lull me to sleep.

Jon, on the other hand, couldn't get enough so I'm filing this one in the success column. It was his vacation too...I guess.

After the symphony, we got back to business with another Christmas market and more fried dough. We just happened upon this market on our way to the subway - it was as delightful as all the others.

That afternoon, we headed to Schloss Schonbrunn, the summer palace of the Hapsburgs. It was impressively large and ornate. We toured the rooms, walked around the grounds, and then hit up their Christmas market. I swear these things were everywhere. This one was lovely because they had live music, and you can't beat the backdrop of a beautiful, glowing palace.

view of the market from a palace window.

That night, we had dinner at Plachutta where we ordered the traditional Austrian dish Tafelspitz. It's basically boiled beef, which I know sounds disgusting, but it was really quite tasty. We bookended the day with another cafe stop for some post-dinner dessert.

I loved the boot mugs at this little market. We stopped here for a drink before dinner.

Tafelspitz!

mmmmmm....pastry.

________________________________________

Day three was also a palace day. Every day should be a palace day. This one was Belvedere, which now exists as more of an art museum. And you guessed it, they had a Christmas market too. Our snack of choice at that one was freshly cut and fried potato chips. Calories don't count on vacation, and I really hope they didn't count on this day.

tea at the palace. chandeliers everywhere. 

We spent the afternoon doing some shopping, hitting up more markets, and buying a new pair of shoes. It's a vacation tradition for me to buy new shoes because all of the ones I brought hurt my feet. I broke down and bought my first pair of Uggs. My feet were so much happier the rest of the trip.

We stopped for tea at the Grand Hotel. There were some diplomatic meetings going on in Vienna while we were there, and I think someone important was about to arrive. The lobby was full of suits with earpieces and reporters. It made for some fun people watching while we enjoyed our traditional afternoon tea.

That night, we had dinner at Steirereck. It's supposedly one of the best restaurants in the world. It did not disappoint, but I was so full at the end that I started to go into food coma a la the Dubai brunch to end all brunches. I guess afternoon tea just three hours before dinner was a bad idea.

i took one sneaky photo of our post-dessert dessert, which arrived partially suspended from this pretty branch.
+1 for presentation.

_________________________________________

Day four was our last day in Vienna. That morning we stopped at Mozarthuas, where Mozart lived for a number of years during his time in Vienna. We had another cafe breakfast and then did some final souvenir shopping before taking the train to Salzburg.