August 2 - Vienna, Austria

I got up before the alarm went off and had my shower. By the time I was finished, it was time for Dawn to get up. We had to get breakfast in before the tour left at 8:15 am.  We went to breakfast and had what we wanted. We sat with the two women from dinner last night, and another lady joined us, part way through. She was from Seattle so there was lots to talk about. Her luggage hadn't arrive yet, so she spent much of yesterday doing some shopping. She had lots of problems because her debit card didn't work (didn't have the chip), so it took her some time to et the money to pay for the things she bought.

After breakfast, we headed back to our room to get ready for the tour. However, we both weren't too keen on going this morning. We were still tired from all the walking yesterday so decided not to go in the morning. We did have two tours later on in the day.

After lunch, we took an optional tour to the Schoenbrunn Palace. This was the home of the ruling family of Austria over many years in the 16th century and on. This palace was used for various things. One king didn’t like it for a summer palace and started building one near downtown Vienna, the next decided it was great and moved back to the original palace. Finally Marie Theresa, a much loved ruler even now, consolidated everything at the Schoenbrunn Palace.

It is a huge place with over 1000 rooms (the tour guide said we were going to see them all, but then laughed and told us we were only going to see one section.  

The grounds are huge. There is a huge garden behind that goes up to an Arch of Triumph, and apparently there is as much garden on the other side of the Arch. Inside the main courtyard, there are buildings all around, and likely housed some of the guards in the old days.

Near the palace, we stopped and looked down the length of the building. The guard and servant quarters extended for ½ a mile each way. The place was absolutely huge.

Inside we went through a number of rooms, viewing the various things and admiring the value of the things in there. It was similar to the palace we had visited in St. Petersburg. They lived a very rich and pampered life (when they weren’t having babies).

The tour was only an hour long with the guide, and once she was finished with us, we went back outside. It was hot, so we went and sat under an umbrella and had a drink. We were due back to the bus by a set time, and we made it with lots of time to spare.

After that, it was back to the ship for dinner.

After dinner, we had another optional tour to a Viennese Concert. This was downtown in a concert hall of no particular importance, but, one of several in the city.

Inside the building, we had to go upstairs a couple of floors, because there was more than one concert room in this place. The one we were scheduled to attend was in a middle-sized hall, about 10 meters wide by 20 meters long. It had a very high ceiling which was rounded to reflect sound back down into the room. There was a small stage with a number of chairs set up.

For the audience, there were about 40 rows of seats, each having about 20 seats. The seats were padded, wooden seats that were wide, although not overly comfortable. There were also seats ringed around the room, so in all, the hall likely held about 1000 people.

When the orchestra entered, there were 3 women and 8 men, one who was the concertmaster. One woman was on the piano, 2 were on violins. The Concertmaster played violin, and another man did, too. The rest of the men played viola, cello, bass, clarinet, oboe, and flute.

They sat down and began playing. It was great to hear, and they were very good.

The group also included two singers; the woman sang soprano, and the man sang tenor. Their pieces were operetta songs. Along with the singers, there were also two ballet dancers, a man and a woman.

The concert was about an hour and a half, with a 15 minute intermission. Time went by very quickly. We really enjoyed the performance, and were surprised at how the time had gone by so quickly.

Back to the boat we went, and off the ship went for the next day. We would be visiting a couple small villages and sailing through some very pretty country for a stretch of quiet time.