Vienna, Day 2
On our second day in Vienna we went a bit outside the city to the summer palace of the Habsburgs, the Schonbrunn palace and gardens. This is a big (like, really huge!) palace about a 20-minute metro ride outside of the city. There were quite a few people all dressed up in fancy outfits, which we all thought was really cool. The women were the fanciest, but there were also men and even some children dressed up.
I couldn’t pick just one picture of the palace, so I am posting a bunch of them! The palace was as beautiful from the back as it was from the front. In the pictures from the back you can see the big fancy gardens; this place was inspired by Versailles, and for those that have visited both you can certainly see the resemblance. This is also where Mozart gave his first concert at the ripe old age of six. We did the longer tour inside the building, which takes you through 40 fully furnished rooms with a handheld audioguide (in English). The kids like it when they get the audioguides because they can pick random things to listen to and then switch to others when they get bored.
The gardens behind the palace are gorgeous. There are several areas that you need a special ticket to go into, and we didn’t think it would be worth the price since we could see so much without it. The middle of the gardens are manicured flowers and pathways, and to each side are park-like pathways through trees-lined corridors with fountains, sculptures, and archways sporadically placed.
After the palace our group split up. Lori and I went to the Belvedere, an art gallery with some beautiful gardens. The Belvedere museums are made up of four separate areas. We did not visit Belvedere 21, which has modern and contemporary art (some of it looked pretty weird). The Lower Belvedere was closed for renovations, so we didn’t get to visit it but were still able walk by the outside. We spent our time visiting the Upper Belvedere, which is beautiful inside. In many places the building architecture was just as beautiful as the artwork. One of my favorite exhibits was the character heads by MX Messerschmidt. There are a few in the Budapest art museum that we saw, and here they had a bunch more. These are so super cool, and I think it would be neat to have miniature replicas of all 49 of his sculptures of extreme facial gestures.
This is the reason I wanted to go to the Belvedere—to see the collection of Gustav Klimt. There was a temporary exhibit of some of his last works that were incomplete at the time of his death, including Lady with a Fan. It was so cool to see The Kiss, and we spent several minutes looking at this piece from every angle. I also liked seeing different styles of Klimt. His painting Judith looks almost completely photorealistic in the face, whereas Blooming Poppies looks like an attempt at pointillism. Although there was much more at the Belvedere and we went through it all, the Klimt exhibits were definitely the highlights.
The gardens connect the Upper Belvedere to the Lower Belvedere. The building with the green roof is the upper, and the building with the red roof is the lower. Both are beautiful, I enjoyed viewing each from across the gardens.
While I was at the Belvedere looking at amazing art, JonPaul, Tom, and the kids went to the Natural History Museum since I thought the kids would like this much better than yet another art museum. They ended up loving it!
The outside of the Natural History Museum is beautiful. Near here is also a statue of Mozart, which has flowers in the shape of a treble clef. JonPaul took the picture knowing I would like it!
JonPaul took a bunch of pictures when they were at the museum so I could see all the fun I missed out on. First were the dinosaurs and skeletons. Of course they loved these!
Next were all the rocks and minerals. Since the kids are avid rock collectors (we will need a suitcase to bring back all the rocks they have ‘collected’) they liked this part as well. They didn’t get to the top floor, which was all the taxidermy animals set in habitats. They were all just really tired by now and ready for dinner and a rest.
We met back up with the kids by the Vienna Opera house to get an original Sachertorte. This is a dense chocolate cake with apricot preserves in the middle and a dark chocolate frosting. We got these to go, but if we had eaten them at the Cafe Sacher they would have come with a big dollop of whipped cream on the side, which may had made them better tasting. Unfortunately, we realized these were the same as the chocolate cake balls we had gotten the previous day, and no one wanted to eat them except for me. That was an expensive snack for one person and disappointment for three children who thought they would get cake but ended up with one yucky bite.
