The history of Vienna surrounds the Habsburg Family, because they reigned over Austria for almost 700 years. I thought it would be a good idea to begin our day by seeing the Lipizzaner stallions. They are they world famous "dancing" horses brought to Vienna by Emperor Charles VI. They didn't have any performances while we were in Vienna, but you can pay to watch their morning exercises at the Spanish Riding School. They "exercise" every morning from 10 to 12. I assumed they would be doing some tricks and dance moves during their exercises, but I was very wrong.
We arrived at the Josefsplatz, took a quick picture with the monument to Joseph II (one of the Austrian Emperors, who also happened to be Marie Antionette's brother), before paying our money to watch the exercises.
The exercises were a complete waste of time and money. They just walked and trotted the horses around the ring over and over again with classical music playing overhead. Occasionally, they would break into a gallop for a few seconds. Not a single trick, jump or dance step to be seen. Sidney and Lyndon said they learned how to trot horses at camp this summer. I said that we could watch horses walk around in Davidson County for free. Dan was really nice about the whole thing and held his tongue. The stands around the exercise ring were packed with people, so they rake in the money with these "morning exercises." I can't imagine how much it costs to attend an actual show. The horses had a really nice ring, though. Their chandeliers were bigger than in some palaces. Oh, well. Lesson learned. Please don't waste your money at this spot if you go to Vienna. At least we can say that we saw the Lipizzaner stallions, I guess.
The next stop was St. Stephen's Cathedral. It was built around 1300 and is considered the iconic image of Vienna. We learned that the roof was heavily damaged in WWII bombing raids, but the city pulled together to rebuild it.
Mozart was married in this church, attended Mass here and had two of his children baptized here. The interior was beautiful.
We learned that during WWII, the citizens of Vienna were afraid that Nazi occupiers would destroy or steal the treasures of the church. They meticulously dismantled the stained glass windows (seen at the back of the top picture) and stored them until the war ended. They also made a shell of brick surrounding the pulpit (on the left side of the top picture) in order to protect it. As the Nazis realized they were defeated, the bitter commander ordered that the church be destroyed before they left town. Luckily, his subordinates couldn't bring themselves to obey his orders.
Following our church tour, we decided to check out Vienna's largest city park, Stadtpark, to find a shady place to beat the heat and give the kids a chance to run around. We passed Mozart's residence in Vienna on the way. We decided not to tour the house, because I read it wasn't that great of an exhibit. I figured we would find other Mozart opportunities while in Salzburg, his birthplace.
While there was not a playground to be found in the park, the kids were able to run around. It was really a beautiful park.
I found this crazy sign at the park that caught my attention because of the fat rat in the bottom right corner.
I couldn't figure out if it was telling people not to feed the rats or what its message was. (We hadn't seen any rats. Vienna is a very, very clean city.) I translated it at home (the miracle of the internet) and it says "Whoever eats doves also eats rats." What?!? Apparently, they have an issue with people killing and eating the pigeons found in the park?! I guess they wanted to make it clear that pigeons eat rats, so by eating a pigeon you are eating rats by default. Crazy!
After some downtime in the park, we headed toward the Danube River so we could take a 25 minute tram tour around the Inner Ring of the Vienna, in order to get a better lay of the land.
We passed a window display about Jack along the way. It is so funny that we always run across something with Jack's name. That is not a common name here in Austria.
The translation says, "Jack -- forget what you ever heard about him" Ha! Indeed. I hope his kindergarten teachers will give him a clean slate...
Here is a picture of the kids and the Danube.
The tram tour was really interesting and helpful for us to learn our way around our part of Vienna. The Hard Rock Cafe was near the final tram stop, so the kids wanted to eat there for dinner. It was good to take a break from Wiener Schnitzel. I am afraid the kids and I will turn into schnitzel before the end of our trip. Of course, they were sold out of patches for Jack's backpack collection, but we got him a pin instead.
We ended the day with another swim in the pool to try to cool off from the scorching weather.
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