Thursday morning my alarm went off. I grabbed my phone and crawled back into bed, falling right back to sleep. That Husband did the same thing, which meant the day didn't unfold anything like what we had planned, but we went to sleep happy about it anyway.
The first thing we did upon leaving our hotel was make our way to St. Charles Alimentary for lunch. Yet another New York Times recommendation, and yet another big time win. We slurped down tomato soup, soaked up the remnants with homemade bread, and washed it all down with water so pure it tasted sweet (I'm a bit of a water aficionado), all for only 8 euros! We actually paid 10 because it was so good that we thought they deserved more. We walked away feeling refreshed and wishing we had another day in Vienna to come back for lunch the next day. It's a teeny tiny little shop, only two wooden tables, and we drank our water out of glasses handblown by the chefs wife. I might ask TH if webcam order a set of glasses/pitcher for Christmas because it would be a really nice way to remember our trip.
On our way to Schonbrunn.
(imagine a chorus of angels singing here)
Glorious!
If my iPhone picture looks this good I'm getting really excited to see what I have on my dSLR.
We walked up the hill and took pictures looking down on the palace and the light was killer and I took pictures with all of the lenses in my bag just to make sure I had every vantage point covered.
I tried various times to get fellow tourists to take pictures of the two of us but I'm not really happy with how any of them turned out (due to my puffy face; too much white flour!)
We also tried to do self portraits but I apparently made little videos of us posing and wondering why the shutter wasn't moving. Oops! Funny blooper reel I guess.
One of my contacts was causing me problems so we made a pit stop at the hotel so I could put in a new one (every single time I travel somewhere I make sure I have an extra contact for each eye just in case). We stopped in at a grocery store to get some treats and TH turned into a gleeful little kid, hunting down his favorite treats from when he was younger.
After my new contact was inserted (and many many cheese straws from the European market were consumed) we walked over to try to visit Mozarthaus and the catacombs of St Stephens. Right in front of Julius Meinl (where we had wanted to visit again), a huge crowd had gathered for some sort of political rally. I was careful about taking pictures because I didn't want the police to get made (there was a lot of crowd control man power) but another American tourist said she talked to a policeman said it was fine. The crowd was so big though that I admit I was nervous about a riot breaking out and me getting run over because of my bum ankle. No riots though, at least while we were there.
We walked over to the Mozarthaus but it turns out that the 7pm time they have listed on their site isn't when people need to be in the door to start the tour, it's when you have to be out. TH was so sad because he spent two weeks living in Vienna once and he said that the Mozarthaus helped him fall in love with classical music.
Our next attempt was at St. Stephens. (foreshadowing anyone?) Mass was starting soon so we couldn't really see anything there either! No access to the catacombs until the next day.
At that point the only thing we had left on our to-do list was eat, so we made our way over to Figlmueller to see if we could find a seat. The location was the smaller one of two, and they said we wouldn't be able to eat without a reservation that night. We walked one street over to a place called The Twelve Apostles (well something in German that translated to that) and managed to track down a gruff waiter who barked out that we couldn't eat there without a reservation either.
We started to walk around, bickering about what to do. I was trying to keep my calm because this was our nice vacation and I didn't want to spoil things with a fight, but we were both quite frustrated after being rebuffed 4 times in a row!
We walked around looking for a place that looked decent and settled on a spot that advertised Schnitzel for 13 euros (we really didn't want to leave Vienna without eating some schnitzel).
We sat down and opened up the menu to discover that the advertising had been rather deceptive. The veal schnitzel was really closer to 20 euros and I did not feel good about our choice so... We left!
I felt bad walking out after we had sat down and unfolded or napkins, but after an awful awful meal at a tourist trap in DC I have vowed to never ever waste my time at a crappy restaurant again. It's possible that this place would have been really good, but the lack of people (on a night when we couldn't even get a table at other places we knew were delicious) said otherwise.
After a few more rounds of debating we decided to give Fuglmueller another try. Turns out the little location was reservation only, but the big spot was accepting walk-ins! As you can see from this crowd (which we witnessed the first time we walked by as well), it's definitely a hot spot in Wien. The schnitzel was delicious and we walked home happy with how the day went, even after all those rejections. For me, a good vacation is all about the food!
