Jamiewrites: Vienna Day 3

Note: this post contains typos, some very poor spelling of place names, and more than a few unnecessary duplicate photos. But I want to post the damn thing, so I'll go back and fix them later.

After some research we decided we'd buy the frequently advertised but often not worth the money and effort tourist pass for the city, since (unlike some places) it covered enough of the things we wanted to see and could fit in over the two days, plus the hop on/hop off bus. Armed with that, we caught the metro (since it would get us there earlier) out to Schonbrunn palace (no photos inside; check out this page to see) and wandered the grounds for ages. There's a zoo there that at first we weren't going into, since it doesn't have anything we couldn't see anywhere else, but we saw that it had not only red pandas but giant pandas, as well as a giant anteater - which we'd failed to see do anything but sleep during our visit to Munich Zoo.

This turned out to be a good option, 'cause we saw the giant anteater get up and move around. Not so much luck with the red pandas, but we got to see some giant pandas and a few other things as well.

Next up was the Belvedere museum, which we got to via the sightseeing bus - though there's very little between the two in terms of sights - and, after a coffee (probably the priciest we'd encountered in either of the cities we'd been to so far - yet still less than what I paid for two coffees in Dubai airport on the flight over) we went for a look. A few interesting things, but the highlight was definitely Klimt's 'The Kiss'.

After that we used the sightseeing bus as our taxi again, this time to get us back into town and towards where we'd be spending the evening - Palais Schornbrunn, for a night of live music with the Wiener Barock Orchester*. Before that, though, we needed dinner. We were both a little bit over German/Austrian food, so when we came across a Japanese fusion place, we opted for that. It was a good choice; some great Japanese food, and I even went a night without alcohol and got green tea instead. Rochelle finally got to try the schnapps she'd been hoping to have since we arrived, but was very disappointed to find it was nothing like what passes for schnapps in Australia, but is more like vaguely apple scented brandy.

Dinner over with, we went to the venue for the music. We were somewhat surprised that our tickets were technically VIP level (they weren't cheap, but there was nothing about VIP on the email) and got us front row in the little room we were in, as well as a live album of the group and a complimentary drink at interval.

Eventually the music got started and it was amazing. To hear Mozart's 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusic' the first thing on the program - played live in Vienna when you're in the front row is just magical. And it continued throughout. There were six instrumentalists (piano, viola, cello, bass and two violinists, one of whom was the band leader and did the speaking; I can only describe her as sounding like either a Eurovision host or Jane Turner from Kath and Kim when she did the SBS announcer parody (Svetlana?).

What we didn't realise is that we'd get singers as well - a pair of them, who sang songs from 'Don Giovanni' and 'The Magic Flute' and another during the encore that I didn't catch the name of. And they didn't just stand and sing; they did it all in character, which is such a good thing when they're singing in languages you don't speak/understand. They were brilliant; the whole damn thing was brilliant - one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had in all my travels.

In a great mood we walked to the nearby metro station - Vienna is very easy to get around - and went back to our apartment.

*That's how they spell it; who am I to argue?