Austria and Prague 2019 - Picnic at the Palace

Schonbrunn Palace is an impressive structure constructed in 18th century. Originally a hunting palace it stands behind a gate and fence which opens on a large open space. Benches line the sides of the space. Fountains surrounded by circles of grass flank the one time royal residence. It is painted Viennese Yellow, the color of a daffodil. It was originally painted pink and blue, why the color was changed and when are details lost to history. Outbuildings dot the grounds in the immediate vicinity of the palace.

We choose a bench and pull out the tuna fish sandwiches made with croissants we had purchased the day before. Cans of tuna are a travel staple of ours, cheap, nourishing and easy to prepare. We snack on a trail mix made by my husband, another travel staple of ours. We offer the trail mix to the gentleman sharing the bench with us. He has us sprinkle it on the salad he is eating. We watch carriages full of  tourists go by then set out to enjoy the extensive gardens of the palace.

Flowerbeds set in lush green lawns surround sculptures. Vines trained over wire create tunnels to gazebos. One of the vines is a medium red wild rose, my husband mentions how beautiful it must be when the rose is in full bloom. There is a hedge maze, in our still somewhat jet lagged state we decided to skip that. The city's zoo is also located here.

A tall hill surmounted by a classically designed overlook building with twin switchback trails to the top rises above the gardens. Taking a deep breath and steeling ourselves we begin to wind our way up. The climb is slightly challenging but not overly arduous and the view from the top proves worth the effort. The city of Vienna is laid out in front of us. My husband becomes Mr. Congeniality offering to take pictures of seemingly dozens of couples as they pose together on the overlook. In a somber moment my husbands relates his imagining, from this vantage point, the bombing of the city during the war. I, too, had been thinking of the horrors that must have been experienced by the population during those dark times.   The walk down is, of course, far easier than the walk up. We re board the the bus to head back into the city. A last bit of information is relayed to us as we pull away. The palace complex was the site of the music competition between Mozart and Salieri. On a less culturally important note it was also used as background in a James Bond movie.

Austria and Prague 2019 - Vienna Day 2

We started our day, as we often do when traveling abroad, locating the BBC as we showered and dressed, sometimes the only English language t.v. option available. We had decided, during our 3 a.m. conversation, on a hop on/hop off bus tour. These are a good way to see a city and you get a treasure trove of information and history about what you are passing by. We thought it would be a relaxing and leisurely way to spend the day after the frenetic pace we had been keeping over the last 2 days.

We learned that 1/3 of the city was destroyed during WW2. Some was rebuilt using the original plans to retain the integrity of important historical areas. Other parts are a juxtaposition of hastily constructed apartment houses, built to alleviate the post war housing shortage, standing side by side with richly ornamented mid 19th century baroque structures. We learned that 50% of the city is green space and the Danube, which runs through the city, has been turned into a canal to control it's annoying habit of flooding, sometimes with devastating results.

There are 3 hop on/hop off bus lines in Vienna. One of these runs to the Schonbrunn Palace located in the outskirts of the city. I had read about it during my research for the trip but due to the limited time originally scheduled for Vienna did not see how we could fit it into our itinerary. We decided to seize the opportunity fate had given us. We took one of the buses which departed near our hotel and then transferred, at the renown Viennese Opera House, to the one that went to the palace. At times the trip to the palace became almost comical as the bus squeezed down narrow streets lined with ornate baroque buildings, still ubiquitous in the city despite the destruction of the war. Moving through more modern areas as we traveled away from the historical center of Vienna we soon found ourselves at the gates to the palace.

Austria and Prague 2019 - Leopold Museum and Insomnia

The Leopold Museum features early 20th century Viennese art, furniture, objects and fashion. The collection includes many works by both Gustav Klimt, an artist whose work I was eager to become better acquainted with, and the dark, harsh vision of Oskar Kokoschka. Balancing out Mr. Kokoschka are the lovely landscapes of the late 19th and early 20th century female artist Olga Wisinger Florian. Some of the furniture is full of the flowing lines and graceful silhouettes of the Art Nouveau movement. The strong, geometric lines of other pieces foreshadow the Art Deco movement soon to come. The ceramics and glassware are sensuous examples of utilitarian objects being elevated to the status of art. The collection is small but strong, well curated and intensely focused.

As we left we were beginning to struggle with the lack of sleep over the previous 24 hours. It is suggested that you stay awake until your normal bedtime hour to mitigate the effects of jet lag. Our brains and bodies were like jelly, staying awake was not possible and we found ourselves passing out at 5 p.m.  Unfortunately this led to both my husband and me lying in bed talking about this and that at 3 a.m. our sleep habits having at that point being thrown completely out of whack. We laid back down but eventually gave up both the hope and pretense of further sleep, got up and began our bonus day in Vienna.

Austria and Prague 2019 - Vienna's Main Cathedral and a Stroll to The Leopold

It sits in one of the many plazas. It is dark and imposing. It is Vienna's main cathedral. The present structure was begun in the 13th century although the site has been a religious one since the 10th century. The hundreds of years of the city's history is evident in the foundations of buildings dating to Roman era occupation left exposed in one of the ubiquitous plazas. The cathedral, like many priceless treasures in Europe, was heavily damaged during WW2. The restoration is seamless. I find myself happy that they could recreate the beauty and detail, although a little dark and Gothic for my taste, apparently the times in which it was built was not particularly happy and carefree,  I feel sorrow that man has rarely found a way to overcome differences that does not include violence, destruction and ruin.

We stepped back into the plaza and began our search for the Leopold Museum. It took several tries, showing the location of the museum on the map to locals, until we found our way to the museum quarter. Large, beautiful twin museum buildings face each other over an expanse of lawn and sidewalks. Across a street runs a long building which also housing museums. We later found out it had originally been the royal stables. Walking through an arch you step into a plaza, another one. 2 modern museum buildings stand on either side, one of them the cube of The Leopold.

We fortified ourselves first with lunch at an outdoor restaurant on the plaza where a bee showed an immense interest in my husband's wiener schnitzel. Eventually we conceded defeat and allowed it to feast on a small portion of it. Sating itself it flew off leaving us to finish our meal in peace. We purchased 2 croissants for the tuna fish sandwich picnic we had planned for the next day and climbed the steps to the entrance to the Leopold.

Austria and Prague 2019 - A Self Guided, Sleep Deprived, Walking Tour

Imagine the outer edge of a spiderweb. Now imagine the inside of that web blown apart by the elements leaving it a maze of bits and pieces. This is something like Vienna's historical city center. Plazas abut one another. there can be as many as 3 names associated with different areas of the same open space. Streets spread out in what seems a random manner. Some come to an end in yet another plaza (or 3), others change their names for no apparent reason. Even with a map it can be difficult to find ones way. Bear in mind we had been flying all night so we were not exactly, well, fresh.

Not to misunderstand, it is worth it. 18th and 19th century buildings abound. They drip with ornamentation. They are wrapped in floral garlands, faces peer out at you from the center of stone and plaster medallions, statues grace rooftops and stand at watch along their eaves, caryatids, both male and female, the male ones paragons of muscular virility, the females soft and slightly overweight, support balconies and doorways or sometimes just stand around as if awaiting orders on what to do. Upscale shops  Lagerfeld, Chanel, Rolex, Tiffany and Versace among scores of other fill the ground floors of many of the buildings.If you want to spend gobs of money, Vienna has you covered.

After a time we felt the need to answer "nature's call". My husband stepped into the Imperial Burial Vault. The man at the desk allowed us to use the men's room there. Essentially we were peeing in a graveyard. A sign advised us "You are entering a graveyard, please be quiet." We peed as quietly as possible. After our muted urination we snuck into a portion of the vaults. Massive, ornate sarcophagi are lined up behind rails. Signs on the rails told us who was interred within. After a few moments my husband noted that we had not paid admission, were only there due to the largess of the desk attendant and perhaps we should leave before our subterfuge was unearthed. We returned to the maze of streets and using the steeple for a guide found the main cathedral.

Austria and Prague 2019 - The Flight

We were in the second to last row of the plane. Therefore we were among the first of the economy class passengers to board. Since the plane had some seats to spare we ended up with the 4 seat center section to ourselves. We spread out, stowed our bags under the center seats affording ourselves legroom and took turns laying out across the center seats during the night hours of the flight in an attempt to "plane sleep". I have never been successful at sleeping on a plane, I envy those who claim they can. I dozed, played games on the video screen on the back of the seat in front of me, drank white wine and generally whiled away 8 hours of my life. Through the plane's windows as we land   is a view of lush farmland, small, quaint clusters of buildings and scores of wind turbines.

Customs took only seconds, our luggage arrived in near record time and we grabbed a cab into the city. We rode through graffiti scarred areas of the city. In Vienna the romantic Danube river is a canal, it needed to be tamed due to frequent flooding, it's concrete sides have, over the years,been  turned into a colorful citizen's canvas.

We arrived at our hotel at 9:30 in the morning, a full 11 hours earlier than expected, Our room would not be available until 2 that afternoon so we stashed our luggage in the hotel storage room among stacks of sheets, pillows and roll away beds and running on pure adrenaline at that point, grabbed a tourist map from the front desk and set out.

Austria and Prague 2019 - A Tale of a Confusing Beginning and Travel Luck

So this was our plan, in order to make the airfare affordable we were to fly to Lisbon, layover 6 hours then continue to Vienna. There we would spend one day and two nights. We would continue by train to Salzburg, where we would stay for two nights. Then we would end our trip with three nights in Prague, a place we had discussed visiting for the better part of ten years.

The night before our departure we received a rather confusing text message regarding our flight having been delayed. The next morning we checked Air Portugal's website and it reported the flight leaving at its scheduled time. So, luggage in hand, we ordered a UBER and headed towards O'hare.

The driver's GPS had him wind through a number of the neighborhoods on Chicago's north side, scenic but not particularly efficient. En route we received an email telling us our 6 p.m. flight was delayed seven hours. It was now scheduled to depart at 1 a.m. The Air Portugal app still listed the flight leaving as originally scheduled. We continued to O'Hare. Upon arriving at the airport we discovered that our flight to Lisbon was, indeed, delayed for seven hours which would mean we would miss our connecting flight to Vienna. Questions were mounting. Would we have to scrub Vienna from our plans altogether? Would we be paying for a hotel room we wouldn't be using  if we were further delayed?

We got in line at the Air Portugal counter with several other concerned and confused flyers. After waiting an hour Air Portugal employees appeared. A young man in a soiled white dress shirt said "Oh, your connecting flight will be leaving before this one arrives." We dryly informed him that we were aware of this. He pushed a few buttons on his keyboard and proclaimed "There is a non stop to Vienna on Austria Airlines that leaves at 4:30 and arrives in Vienna at 8:30 a.m." After pushing a few more buttons he handed us our passports and directed us to the Air Austria desk where they would issue our boarding passes. It was now 3 p.m.

So, in summary, our flight that was scheduled to leave at 6 p.m. with the 6 hour layover would put us in Vienna at 7 p.m. the next day. We, however, were now booked on a non stop to Vienna, which would be leaving earlier then our original flight, that would deliver us to Vienna at 8:30 a.m. the next day, ten and a half hours before our initially scheduled arrival time. Not only would we not miss Vienna we would pick up an extra day there. We rushed through security to the gate.