5/31 Friday
Another rainy day in Vienna. We’re ok, we've got
umbrellas. We start out late enough to make our first stop coffee and cake.
We’re looking for the Imperial Café, another fine, traditional coffee café.
It’s part of the Imperial Hotel, five-star if ever we saw one. The café is
noted for their Imperial Torte, so that’s what we have. We do not leave
disappointed.
We’re having an Imperial sort of
day, so we go to the Imperial Palace complex to see the Imperial Treasury. The
collection is very interesting, 10th – 18th century
pieces, crowns, scepters and orbs, exquisite jewelry, coronation vestments,
embroidered tapestries, unicorn (narwhale) horns, massive sapphires and pearls
and emeralds, woven into gold belts or crowns or chalices. Charlemagne’s saber,
Napoleon’s baby crib. The detail in the metalwork and embroidery is
fascinating.
Vienna is a city that wears a ball
gown every day. When you look at these buildings, you think it’s just not
possible, it’s a fantasy view. They can’t be serious. Every sight is more
glamorous than the last. We walk out
past the immense, ornate Parliament buildings, stretching over several blocks,
covered with winged chariots at the corners, statues along the roof line,
fountains, pillars, equestrian statues, Neptune, Venus, dragons, gargoyles, all
over the place, marble and gold, great circling stairways. If we listed the
proper names for all the details, we’d have a little architectural dictionary.
We
pass the equally ornate, high gothic Rathous, we don’t know what that is, but
it’s gorgeous and imposing. Everywhere around us, the city offers visual treats
and surprises. We look up along a sidewalk passage and find an ornately
decorated vaulted ceiling. A peek into a hotel shows a lobby as beautifully
deluxe as the Hapsburg apartments in the museum. Along the skyline, there are elaborate
vignettes acted out by gilded statues along the crests of the buildings.
Our stop on the way home is a really
neat brewpub sort of place, Café Einstein. There are dark wood benches, kegs, a
tree growing in the center of the room, hearty fare, lots of folks. We write
our postcards home and share a plate of beef and wurst and gnocchi in a
tomatoey-paprika sauce.
2 Videos Included
May 31st, Vienna Treasury Part 1
May 31st, Vienna Treasury Part 2
No comments:
Post a Comment