A Short Visit to Vienna

Since it took such a long time getting to Vienna, we only had two full days in the city. They were taken up with either art, composers or visiting with Claire and her family. It was great to see her again and to get to meet her new daughter. Our first day we met up with them for lunch. Afterwards Claire and I took the kids for a walk and played in the playground. The second day we went out to their house in Seestadt for dinner.

Art
In such a short time we managed to go to the Albertina and the Belvedere. The Albertina has a permanent exhibit "From Monet to Picasso" which I liked. Though my favourite part was to go through the palace rooms. The building was originally the palace of Duke Albert and Archduchess Marie-Christine (daughter of Marie-Therese), Albert being the one to begin the collection of artwork. We went in the evening, and it was unusual to be able to wander through the staterooms without barriers and with very few guards.

Pretending to wait for a royal audience

The Belvedere was also originally a palace, and so if one tires of the artwork, there is also the building to look at! We saw some more impressionists, and the amazing Klimt collection.

Composers

Dad took us on a good tour of where different composers lived, worked and died. Vienna does a great job of making this easy, as most buildings seem to have a plaque up saying what palace the building used to be, or which famous person lived/worked/died there. We also went through the Mozart Haus, where Mozart lived for a few years and composed The Marriage of Figaro.

Not the Mozarthaus, but where he died

The common flags and sign telling of a former palace (this time nothing to do with a composer)

We also managed to go for coffee at the Cafe Central, which before being a tourist attraction was a popular meeting place for people such as Lenin, Trotsky, Freud, Hitler...

Time for Kaffee und Kuchen

And then, after such a short visit, it was time to catch the train back to Frankfurt.

Riding the Ringstrasse to the Hauptbahnhof