Vienna 3

Vienna Day 3

Brian and I started out our day with a trip to Café Central.  It was a beautiful café with amazing food as well as desserts. Of course, we had dessert with breakfast ! There is no way I am missing out on any desserts while on this trip.  They are way too pretty and delicious to pass up.  We ordered something that I could not pronounce, but it was number 20 and it involved a cinnamon cream, plum jam, and a sort of shortbread cookie.  It was light and fantastic.

After our breakfast, we walked over to a shop called Xocolat which specializes in all different types of chocolate! We made a few purchases (of course) and spent quite some time drooling over everything.  They had everything kind of chocolate imaginable and we purchased a variety of truffles for ourselves.  I'll have to let you know how they are. After this it was time to do some more sightseeing.

Secession Museum

We hopped on a train and returned to Karlsplatz where we walked through the Secession Museum to see some fascinating modern art and then we walked through the park and into the Karskirch.  This amazing and humongous church was a site to see! Admission was fairly inexpensive and we were able to view the entire church, a small museum, as well as take the lift up to the top of the church.  The view was amazing, though I have to admit, I was slightly terrified being up that high and on nothing more than a staircase constructed of wood and plastic.  Needless to say, I felt much safer once back on the ground.  After Karlskirch, we began our walk to the Belvedere.

Karlskirch

On the way to the Belvedere

The Belvedere: this stunning art museum is a must see if you are ever in Austria.  Brian and I went to the upper Belvedere first and spent time viewing all the paintings.  After this, we walked through the amazing gardens to get to the lower Belvedere.  This section had fewer paintings, but it housed some stunning work from more modern painters.  We both agreed that this place would be somewhere we could spend hours if we had the time, but I was unfortunately starving at this point and so we headed out to find some food.

The Belvedere

Belvedere Gardens

Hofburg Palace

We took a train to Café Demel.  This was exciting as we were super disappointed to find it closed yesterday.  Today we took no chances.  We arrived around 4 to find a bustling restaurant with lines everywhere.  We waited for around 30 minutes to get a seat in the non-smoking section and ordered dinner as well as TWO desserts. I ordered a noodle souffle and Brian ordered the egg dumplings.  For dessert we had a layered sponge-cake with chocolate frosting and a layered chocolate cake with hazelnut frosting.  Everything was fantastic and Café Demel certainly lived up to it’s famous reputation.  After dinner, we walked past the Palace and over to the Opera house.  It was a beautiful walk.  After all this walking, and eating, we were stuffed and exhausted.  We decided to head back to the hostel to take a break and possibly a nap.  We got back around 6:30 and fell asleep around 7.  The plan was to nap and then head out to find a cute bar or possibly a club.

Demel's Pastry Chefs

Egg Noodles

Noodle Souffle

Dessert Selection at Cafe Demel (some of it)

Staatstoper Opera House

Around midnight, we woke up, wide awake, and amused at how we napped for 5 hours…anyways, we headed downstairs, got free drinks from the bar in our hostel and spent some time just hanging out.  Even though we did not make it back out we had an amazing day and caught up on some much needed sleep.  After being wide-awake for around 3 hours, I fell back to sleep.  Brian couldn’t sleep and ended up staying up for the rest of the night! Oh well, we do get to rest on a 3 hour train ride to Salzburg tomorrow!

Sign for the Train Bathrooms...