The Hapsburgs had a pretty good thing going for several hundred years. World War I put a very definite end to that but the grandeur of their reign lives on in and around Vienna. Vienna was a city worthy of an empire, still is, but today it is considered a head without a body. Austria is just too small and insignificant to warrant such a treasure.
We have visited Vienna before – before we were season travelers – and we certainly missed a lot. We continued to miss a lot today, too. Just not enough time to take it all in; the theater, the concerts, the opera (as if we had the clothing.) So we’ll be back.
St Stephens, not as good as we remembered
Today we visited Schonbrunn, the Hapsburg summer palace – well, the grounds, anyway. It seemed like every elementary school turned loose its kids to forage at the Christmas market in the courtyard and terrorize the adults. Then we took the U-bahn into St. Stephensplatz for a look around and another visit to St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It didn’t seem nearly as impressive today as it did ten years ago when it was the finest church we had seen. We’ve been around the block since then.
