Days 9 & 10: Vienna and home

 Sunday (Day 9) was a full day for me in Vienna. I woke up in my comfy bed at 5.30 (the Hoxton Hotel is deliciously awesome btw) and lazed for a bit, hoping that I’d snooze again.  When that didn’t work, I got cleaned up, checked out of the hotel, stowed my bags, and hit the city on foot.  I had a few destinations in mind, but mostly I wanted to wander.

First stop was breakfast.  I was hoping to find a nice casual café, but after too long wandering with no luck, I stumbled upon the Sacher Café.  They’re a super-touristy venue with a hotel, a restaurant, and a very famous chocolate cake that my dad still goes on about.  I had a very expensive (and surprisingly bland) breakfast of pastries, egg, smoked salmon, and cappuccino.  Thus fortified, I set out for the National Library.

Monument to the end of fascism. Maybe it's a little premature? 

H has an Atlas Obscura book about a bunch of cool places to see, and The National Library piqued her interest with its secret doors and passages.  I wandered the great hall, examining illuminated texts, reading about how Austria views its own history, and seeking out the passages.  I didn’t see any secret passages, but I saw lots of bookcases that doubled as secret doors to hidden rooms for storage and scholarship.  And a couple of amazing globes!

After the library, I spent too much time trying to find some interesting shopping.  Vienna is full of shops, but they were all closed for Sunday.  The city’s deep catholic roots and trade union workers’ rights efforts continue to keep most retail closed on Sundays.  The only exceptions I saw were the schlocky souvenir shops.

Lunch was Wienner Schnitzel.  My waiter asked me if I wanted fries or a salad as my side.  I thought the potatoes would be too heavy with my fried veal, so I ordered the salad.  It was a potato salad.

After lunch, I took an English-language The Third Man tour.  The Third Man is one of my favorite movies, and this tour takes us underground through the very sewer stairs that Orson Welles used and into the sewer tunnels where the movie was shot.  It wasn’t too stinky!  The tour was really only about the intersection of The Third Man and the sewer system (the guide glossed over all the superterranean bits, but it was still pretty rad.  And, we got to see the spot in the tunnels where Harry Lime was shot!

After the tour, I had a realization about shopping – perhaps the museum gift shops would be an exception to the closed-on-Sundays rule.  And I was right!  My first stop was to the Albetina, a modern art museum.  The had a few great exhibits going on.  The first was one about the New Gothic movement of the turn of the 20th century.  It featured a bunch of artists that I was unfamiliar with, but also one that I know deeply – Katthe Kollwitz.  It was really interesting to see her work situated among her contemporaries, and I was fascinated to see how the Albertina’s interpretation of her work differed from MOMA last summer.

From there I checked out a few other museums before landing at Mozart House. This building houses Mozart’s last apartment in Vienna, but the whole building has been turned into a museum.  It was pretty neat to walk through his rooms and look at his scores.

Then it was time for dinner.  I had Viennese for lunch, so I thought I’d end my time in Europe with a nice Italian meal.  I found a solid restaurant and had a delicious mushroom ravioli with bresaola.  And a green salad.  And a glass of wine.  And a negroni.  And lots of water. After walking over 25,000 steps, I needed to rehydrate.

Dinner complete, it was time to get myself to the airport hotel for my last night in Vienna.  I talked with H and S on the way to the hotel, and I was in bed with the lights off by 9:30 pm.

The next morning, I was up at 4am to get to the airport on time.  When we got to the gate, we learned that fog had grounded a bunch of flights in Amsterdam, so we’d be taking off late.  But not to worry, the staff said, because the fog would also ground all of the connecting flights as well.  We arrived in Amsterdam an hour late, and my plane to LA had already taken off.  So, I guess they weren’t grounded.  I got moved to a flight just a few hours later, and I ended up landing just a few hours after I was originally scheduled.

S picked me up from the airport and I was home in time to have dinner, unpack, and zonk out.  I've been up for over 24 hours now, and I have to teach tomorrow!