Day 5 - Vienna - AM - The Ring
Trip Start
Oct 30, 2009
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Trip End
Nov 09, 2009
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Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
We board our tram which takes us past neo-classic buildings, parks and the Danube Canal, until a kindly passenger advises us that the route was changed last week. Falling off before we are taken to Gotterdammerung, we change to the No. 2.
Alighting at the Stadtpark we purchase tickets for the evening Strauss and Mozart concert at the Kursalon. This is the very spot where the Strauss brothers originally performed their Promenade Concerts. The gilded bronze monument to Johann Strauss is less sparkling today through the drizzle. Our ladies use the bathroom, emerging suitably impressed by the elegance.
There are two other unusual public toilets I use in Vienna. At the Opera underground station there is a piano beside the urinals. I relieve myself swathed in arias from Aida. The art-nouveau toilet on the Graben, designed in 1905, has chandeliers and the cubicles, lined with mahogany and marble panels, have gilded fittings.
The plans to walk through the lovely park are shelved as I begin to get rumblings from the group due to the excess humidity. Meanwhile Papa Lucho’s umbrella has been blown inside out.
By now we are wet and gloomy, and there is only one thing that will cheer us up; chocolate cake. Our skilful guide has positioned us beside the Sacher Hotel, home of the world famous Sachertorte.
Miryam and I rush into the warm Sacher Stube, take a counter seat, and watch as cakes disappear in seconds, sliced and distributed constantly to ravenous shoppers and businessmen. We order ours before they run out, together with a Wiener Würstl sausage lunch.
Looking around for our companions, we find none are in sight. I groan. Up to now things have gone well, occasionally losing the girls in gift shops and the men in exotic Viennese
toilets.
Cecilia appears. "We are all over in the Sacher Café. What are you two doing here?"
“Isn’t this the Sacher Café?” Miryam asks.
The elegant and opulent Sacher Café, filled with tourists and displaying prices double those of Sacher Stube, is inside the hotel.
