Vienna - land of Mozart

We can now add boats to our mode of transportation during our trip:
planes, trains, buses, cars, boats. Since Vienna and Bratislava are
separated by the Danube at a fairly small distance up the river, we
were able to take a ferry from Bratislava to Vienna. We arrived in
little over an our. It was quite enjoyable to a flight or another
lengthy train ride. Our arrival into Vienna was therefore somewhat
interesting. We didn't arrive at the typical city center train
station or airport, but instead were just sort of plopped into the
middle of the city somewhere. Thankfully, we had done some planning
and knew where we were to be dropped off and from there how to get to
our hotel. Vienna, along with many other European cities, has a
fairly good metro system, so we were able to fairly easily get to our
hotel.

After we checked-in and regrouped a little, we headed out to see what
there was to be seen. Vienna is really quite beautiful. Tons of old
majestic buildings that are museums, theaters of some sort, churches,
and old royal residences. We were able to try apple strudel and other
very yummy pastries. Dinner was good (once again, yet another
European city that seems to recognize vegetarians as humans and not
aliens) and Andy was able to sample some of the local beer. During
the next day, we spent a large part of it visiting the museum/old
palace of the Hapsburg Royal Family (one of the few Royal Family's/
Empires I remember from History class). It's so hard to imagine a
life back then as either royalty or as the relatively poor working
class. The money and opulence that goes into establishments at that
time in history is unbelievable. A huge section of the museum is
dedicated just to their table services of silver, gold-plated silver
and porcelain. We learned some about the Royal Family - this is the
family that Marie Antoinette was born into. Most of the focus was on
the most recent generation that lost power with the start of WW I. I
think you could just as easily teach European history from a lineage
point of view and cover just about everything from that angle.

Vienna was a charming city that clearly has much pride in its cultural
heritage and significance. I wish we had a little more time there,
but a couple of days was a good amount to get a general idea.