We arrived in Vienna early this morning to a cloudy and drizzling day. At breakfast Bowman and I noticed, in the high rise portion of Vienna, the Ernst and Young building. We disembarked for our tour of the city at 9am , and it was a busy day. We had a 45 minute drive around the city via bus while our tour guide Ricky showed us some of the sites. Vienna is the capital and approximately 1.7 million live in the city. We saw numerous coffee houses, and the one in which Freud used to frequent. Bowman and John visited one near St Stephan’s cathedral. Some of the sites she pointed out included:

• Oldest carousel in Europe, built in 1860
• Opera House
• Ring road – where the old city walls used to be
• Imperial Palace of the Hofburg – this was enormous, and was only the winter house
•  Stables of the famous Lipizzan dancing horses – we actually got to see the horses walking to their practice session
• We didn’t go into any of the museums, but saw where Klimt’s work was displayed.
• Produce market

Ricky new quite a lot about the city, and talked non-stop. At points we all just stopped listening to her, We stopped at St Stephan’s Cathedral for 45 minutes of free time. The church is a gothic style church, and is very dark inside. The exterior roof shingles were one of the most interesting features. There is an ornate pattern of tiles, that are richly colored.

We learned s lot about Maria Theresa today and the creation of the Rococo style, less ornate buildings. The family ruled for 630 years. I learned that Vienna is not one of my favorite cities.  It reminds me of DC with all the cement buildings. Sure, the are older and more ornate, and there’s a ton of history. But I’ll take a quaint village any day of the week over a cement city.

We returned to the ship for lunch, a quick rest, and then back on the bus to Schonbrun Palace, the summer residence of the Habsburg. The building has 1441 rooms, and a staff of 2500 people to maintain it. We only visited 20 of the rooms and were not allowed to take photos. One of my favorite rooms had frescos on the ceilings. It was an all white room with gold accidents, and the central panel of the ceiling frescos by the Italian artist Gregorio Guglielmi shows the prospering of the monarchy under the rule of Maria Theresa. Ranged around the outside of the painting were other countries ruled by the Habsburgs. Italy, Hungary, and others.

After an early dinner, everyone went to a Mozart concert, and I decided not to go. Instead, I went to the lounge, had a few free drinks with the crew, who were waiting for crew from the Legend to temporarily replace them. This is the end of the season for most of the crew and the 18th is their last night. The season, for this ship,means from March to October.