No, I doubt her death was very pleasant, but Marie Antoinette did live a blessed life, at least when it came to housing. After breakfast we took the subway to Schobrunn Palace, Marie Antoinette's childhood home. The Palace was actually designed by Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette's mother.
As you can see, the Palace was beautiful. We couldn't take photos of the interior, but the decor seemed authentic and, though opulent, gave me a sense of what it must have been like to actually live in the estate. There are different options for the rooms you can see. We paid the less expensive 11.50/person to see 25 rooms and felt as though we'd seen plenty. The grounds are free, but seeing the inside of the palace is definitely worth the price of admission. It's always fun to pretend to be royalty for an hour.
The most interesting thing I learned was that Maria Theresa had a favorite daughter named Maria Sophie and she was the only daughter who was allowed to marry for love and not political/diplomatic reasons. I guess if you were a rich young lady back then it was important to be momma's favorite. Yikes.
The grounds are quite beautiful.
Palaced-out, we went back to the hotel to change clothes, thinking we would attend the opera later in the day. We took the subway, getting off near the opera house and ate lunch at Zwoelf Apostellkeller. It was touristy, but so cozy inside. Just look at that ceiling. We were definitely transported back a few centuries.
And the food was good, too.
We shared an Apostel meat plate and cheese plate, and it was too much food for us.
Meat and cheese plate + bread + water + tip = 27 euro.
Stuffed, we walked to Cafe Alt Wien to have a coffee. The smoking room was the cutest, every inch covered with stickers and posters, but it was filled with smokers and I didn't want to reek at the opera later. So we sat in the larger room in the back. It also had a good atmosphere, with lots of posters of upcoming music shows covering the walls and some strange art. I liked this piece with the chair coming out of it.
I ordered something with "chocolade" and thought it would have coffee in it as well, but it was just a hot chocolate.
Hubs finally got his kleiner brauer which was espresso so strong you could taste the roast on the beans. I loved it, my kind of coffee.
Continuing with my misguided ordering, we stopped for gelato at Zanoni & Zanoni and ordered "melange." I thought the brown bits were pecans and was expecting butter pecan (my favorite), but they were raisins and, of course, I was stuck with rum raisin (far from my favorite). A scoop of mohn softened the blow, though. That mohn scoop was good, sweeter than Eis Greissler's. And at least the mohn was on the bottom, so after I got through the gross rum raisin, all was good. Much better than the other way around, that would've been a disaster. These details are important.
Reluctantly licking away at the rum raisin, we walked up the street to the State Opera House. CARMEN was starting at 6:30. I'd read about the standing room tickets at the State Opera House and knew that you had to get in line early. I also knew that there are over 300 made available every night and they never sell out. We weren't worried about having the best view, we just wanted to experience the opera house affordably. Being up in the rafters was just fine. We walked through the line and five people ahead of us, they sold out. An old man lurking about offered to sell us those same 4 euro tickets for 25 euro each. We thought about it for a bit, longer than he would have liked. It was CARMEN, after all. But the whole point of standing is that the tickets are cheap, and spending 50 euro on the opera wasn't in our budget. And we still had one more night in Vienna, so we still had another chance, though not with CARMEN.
So, much like Don Jose, we said goodbye to CARMEN. I was annoyed at all the scalpers who I felt had stolen our seats. I was mad at myself for trusting the internet and not getting there earlier. I was just pissed. The State Opera House has an even cheaper way to see the opera if you don't want to stand inside. There is a screen and benches where the opera is played live every night during a performance. This also involves arriving very early if you want a seat. There weren't any benches left, but we decided to sit and watch the opening of the show on the ground, since there was still one mat open. I needed a few more minutes of pity party before we moved on.
We had been planning on going out to Nussdorf to Schubel-Auer Heuriger the next night, but quickly flip-flopped our plans and climbed on the trusty tram. Unfortunately, Schubel-Auer is closed on Sun. and Mon., so we went to Mayer instead. The patio was lovely with vine-like trees growing over our heads. An accordion player serenaded the patrons.
We had a glass of red and white and shared an order of spargel (asparagus) cordon bleu which was a perfect small meal for us. Spargel, spargel everywhere in the springtime.
Small spargel cordon bleu + 4 glasses of wine + tip = 25 euro.
We took the tram back to central Vienna, about a 20 minute ride, and got back just in time to see the end of CARMEN at the State Opera House. The building is always beautiful, but it is glorious at night.
I was in a better mood. The bitterness was mostly gone, and I snapped a couple photos of the screen setup outside the opera house.
After Carmen's demise, we went back to Zanoni & Zanoni for another scoop of gelato. Earlier Hubs had gotten a scoop of biscotto and it was amazing and I wanted a scoop of my own. It was vacation. Sometimes you eat gelato twice a day even if you're not in Italy.
With our biscotto cones, we walked around the National Palace at night and Hubs took some photos. The empty streets were a quiet, more mysterious Vienna than we'd been used to. I'm glad I got to see this version of Vienna, if only for an hour.
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