Lipizzaner and Belvedere

 Hello Everyone!

We had an early morning today (and by early I mean vacation early, aka 8 a.m.) and believe it or not it was really hard to find a cafe that was open to eat breakfast in! Nothing opened until 9:30 or 10 am. So we went back to Cafe Central and had another delicious breakfast. Today I tried a new drink called an einspanner, which is espresso and whipped cream, and it felt decadent to have first thing in the morning. 

We then went to a Lipizzaner horse morning warm ups. Unfortunately no photos were allowed when the horses were in the arena, so you'll just have to settle for my smile. I learned so much about this school and these horses, and am so inspired that I think I'll go home and take dressage lessons. Here's a few of my favorite facts, the Spanish riding school is super exclusive and it takes 10 to 12 years to work your way up the ranks in apprenticeship to become a performer. The horses are only stallions and when they're first born they are actually grey. As they get older they get more and more white, and some of them even have a silvery sheen while they transition coat colors. The totally white horses are considered the best in terms of coat coloring...if only this were true about my own white hairs. Going forward I'm just going to consider myself a Lipizzaner horse and add value each time I get another grey hair lol. The morning routine was nice to watch but I wish their performances had started again for the season, apparently even the horses get a summer break too. Guess I'll just have to come back!

 

Mom and I then made our way to the Belvedere which are two Baroque Palaces the belonged to Prince Eugene of Savoy; he used them as his summer residence. Now it's an art museum that has lots of interesting artwork, including the famous Kiss by Gustav Klimt. Klimt isn't my favorite artist, but his work is quite striking in person. I never realized how much gold he actually used to make it sparkle. He laid gold on the base of the canvas and then gilded his at least work twice more! 

It wasn't just the paintings that were stunning, the rooms themselves were so ornate! Prince Eugene definitely had a complex though because he often compared himself to various Greek gods in his paintings or statues. He also often presented himself as a great military leader, even though he actually wasn't one in real life. 

Making our way from the Upper Belvedere to the Lower Belvedere, we walked through a mile of gardens! The entire pathway was lined with sphinxes as well. There were five fountains and even a man-made waterfall. All in all, the main gardens were quite pleasant to stroll through. 

 

The Lower Belvedere had a few uncommon rooms, like the two below. One was entirely golden and had the most interesting paintings on the walls, like the the continent of Africa being represented as a woman riding a crocodile in the right corner of the photo below. Another room was decorated entirely in red marble and plaster.

But my all time favorite part of the Belvedere was the privy gardens. The landscapers spent months planning and organizing to make the gardens look like Klimt's sunflower painting. I thought they did a phenomenal job and mom and I actually sat on a bench enjoying the breeze and flowers for a bit before we made our way back to the main part of town for dinner. 

 

Today I had a hankering for tapas so we found an authentic Spanish restaurant. We had two of my favorite dishes, patatas bravas and ensalada mallorquina. I even chatted with my waitress from Andalucía about my time living in Spain. It was nice to walk down memory lane and I was thrilled with the meal. Vienna has managed to really impress me with their food. We have yet to have a bad meal here (well there was one fluke when we were stuck inside the Schonbrunn gardens but we'll count that as an outlier). Seriously these have been some of the best meals I ever had, it'll be hard to top it tomorrow. 

Until tomorrow's adventure!

Lots of love, 

Carolyn

Sisi Museum and the Imperial Treasury

Hi Everyone! 

Today we started out our morning at the famous Cafe Central in Vienna. It opened in 1876 and was a very popular meeting place for artists, scientists, politicians, and writers. Today? Well, now you can find your average influencer and occasional celebrity. Oh how times have changed, lol. The breakfast was delicious! We had a typical Viennese morning meal, which was a Kaiser roll, croissant, soft boiled egg, and a coffee called melange (which is just an extra foamy espresso). Mom and I didn't leave a single crumb on our plates. 

We then made our way to the Hofburg Imperial Palace to visit the Sisi Museum. Whilst waiting, I took a casual picture with Caesar, of course. The Hofburg was the principal imperial palace of the Hapsburgs. In case you might have forgotten this bit of history like me, the Hapsburgs ruled the Austria (and the territories in its ever-changing empire) from 1282 to 1918. That includes being a part of the Holy Roman Empire! 

Sisi was an Austrian Empress who married into the Hapsburg family. She actually wasn't very popular with the masses until after her death, when she became somewhat of a sensation thanks to her story's marketability. It was actually her sister who was set to marry the emperor, but when she attended the party, the emperor requested her instead. She was actually quite stunning and allegedly her hair was so long that it went to the floor! She loved horseback riding and doing acrobatics on horses. However, her life was quite sad, as her son committed a homicide-suicide with his mistress and her second child died at the age of two. She ended up horribly depressed and coped with it all by traveling throughout Europe. While all these experiences and hobbies probably made her an interesting person, the tragedy in her life made her a  rather aloof and reclusive ruler. When she was assassinated, the newspapers hardly gave her a bit of attention, mostly offering condolences to her husband, who happened to be a crowd favorite.  Honestly I was surprised she was so unpopular because you can't throw a stone without seeing some souvenir with her picture on it today. Also, if I had an entire museum dedicated to my life and they spent the entire time casting me in a rather poor and unsympathetic light, I'd totally haunt and prank the museum lol.

We walked a huge part of the state apartments and even doing so we barely made a dent in many different rooms and exhibits of the Hofburg. The Hofburg is one the the world's largest interconnected building complexes and has a floor area over 300,000 square meters. I don't know how people lived here, you'd need a carriage just to get from one end to the other!

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After walking a bit more of the palace grounds, mom and I got lunch at this cute cafe. The food here has been absolutely incredible, all the ingredients are so fresh and flavorful. Mom had been really wanting to try a true apple strudel with vanilla sauce (which is another local dessert) and this bakery did not disappoint! 

Afterwards we toured the imperial treasury. As you can imagine, the Hapsburgs ruled for so many years that they acquired quite the collection. I couldn't believe some of the jewels I saw, like these bouquets of flowers made up of precious stones or this 2,680 karat emerald - which is the largest cut emerald in the world.

 

Theu even had two “inalienable heirlooms of the House of Habsburg” which we are heirlooms that can never to be sold or traded.  The first was this huge Agate Bowl from 300-400 a.d. cut from a single piece of an agate. It was huge! The second was a narwhal horn which they thought was a unicorn horn with magical properties. I was quite impressed that no one in the family had sold these pieces off. Especially since the "unicorn" horn was well desired globally as quite a coveted possession. 

I think my favorite piece was this coronation mantle from 1133/1134. I couldn't believe the workmanship with the embroidery stitches. My crafter heart was quite impressed and stunned that the thread was still so lustrous and had remained in pretty good condition after all these years. I wish the embroiderers were alive to share their secrets with me as one crafter to another. 

Being surrounded by so much opulence and riches was a hard days work lol. So mom and I decided to treat ourselves to a real Italian meal. And by real Italian, I mean we might as well have been dining in Italy, this place took their food seriously and even imported their produce from there! The piece de resistance most definitely was the lemon tartlet, where they used Sicilian lemons, and I can honestly say I've never had anything like it before. I wish I could have sent you all one home to try, but for now you'll just have to take my word for it or book a trip to Sicily with me during lemon season!

Wishing you guys a wonderful day!

Love you lots, 

Carolyn 

Welcome to Vienna

Hello Everyone! 

Sorry I fell a bit behind on blogging, but the good news is I’ve been really enjoying myself in Vienna!

This was our final morning in Budapest and I felt like a total princess. If you told anyone today I was a shrinking wallflower during my childhood, they absolutely would not believe you. After only four days at our hotel, I had multiple waiter friends, the omelette guy knew my name and order, and I basically didn’t have to wait in any lines anymore. Mom couldn’t stop cracking up and said I was definitely my father’s daughter. Honestly the staff was absolutely lovely and interesting; so I genuinely was curious about them and their lives. But the best part of this morning send off was that there was cake for breakfast! And not just any cake, a passion fruit cheesecake. It was so light and airy, it hardly tasted like a cheesecake at all. I absolutely am going to miss it being perfectly acceptable to eat desserts for breakfast here.

Then off we went to the train station! It was a bit of a faff trying to figure out if we were on the right train or not because the sign board had the platform but the train itself didn’t have any of the car numbers or seat assignments and the porters spoke absolutely no English. Thankfully I found Spanish tourists and a very kind older German gentleman who helped us try and figure it all out. Turns out they did post a little paper sign on the window that said this was the correct train, but failed to mention that because of technical issues we’d be changing trains in Tatabanya, Hungary. I basically had Google maps open and was using my very rudimentary German to try and figure out if we were even going in the right direction! It did help that everyone else looked equally lost and confused. Thankfully alls well that ends well because we eventually got on a very nice train with the quiet car we requested and successfully made it to Vienna! 

The next morning we woke up early to make our way to Schonbrunn Palace. I immediately struck this pose and mom replied “Yes, yes, welcome to your palace.” It’s almost like she knows that if there’s a palace, I’ll immediately and automatically pretend to be its princess lol. While it would be much too stifling and boring to be a real princess, it’s fun to dream. 

Turns out that’s not the only predictable thing about me. Mom also immediately knew that if there’s horses, I will get very excited and want to take a picture. It was actually really funny because all the other little girls lined up with their parents too. And here I was, a thirty something with her mom just as excited waiting my turn for my picture. I guess some things never change! These horse and carriages are called Fiakers and they have very strict laws in Austria regarding them. That’s why all the horses are so immaculate and well cared for, they even have mandatory rest days! 

The palace itself was the summer home of the Hapsburg rulers and the buildings we see today were built and remodeled in the 1740-50s. Maria Theresa was the empresses who received this estate as her wedding present, and boy did she earn it. She had 12 children and was a strong leader of the empire for almost 40 years. She was also the only woman Hapsburg to lead the empire in her own right. Although we quickly learned that having lots of money doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got style lol. Some of the rooms were immaculate like this wood and gold one. 

However most of the rooms were like this one, where they picked one print of silk and then used it on every single piece of furniture, wall, bedding, drapes, etc. I guess you can’t argue that anything didn’t match.

I particularly enjoyed all the chandeliers and ornate gold work.  

Not to mention that the ballroom was absolutely beautiful! I can easily imagine all the ladies in their fancy dresses waltzing the night away.

Apparently Maria Theresa had a fondness for Chinese art so you can see multiple rooms like this one that are paneled with gold inlay all with various Chinese drawings and decorated with porcelain. It was so strange how much Asian art there was, sometimes it almost felt like an Asian museum instead of an Austrian one. 

After exploring the palace mom and I decided to try and tackle as much of the 435 acres of gardens as we could, but first we had to fuel up on coffee and pastries. I decided to combine mine this time and ordered and iced coffee with ice cream! This is actually a traditional drink called Wiener Eiskaffee and we already know I’m all about trying the local food, especially when it combines two of my favorite things. 

After our break we began to wander the gardeners. It was  fashionable at the time to have fake Roman ruins, so these were intentionally built as one of the many attractions in the gardens. 

Mom and I quite enjoyed the broderie parterre, which is just a fancy way of saying they planted the flowers to make shapes and designs that could be viewed from above in the palace windows and balconies. 

We also did two of the labyrinths. The first one was pretty easy and mom and I played the various lawn games we passed that were hidden in the alcoves. However the second labyrinth was much harder and even I got panicked for a bit that we wouldn’t find the exit again. After trying twice, mom gave up but I told myself I would try one last time. I mean, you don’t finish law school unless you’re particularly stubborn. And my tenacity paid off! I made it to the center where they had a giant tree walk and you could see below and out as well. Mom is the tiny figure in the first photo in purple waving to me. 

We then headed off the the organerie, which ironically had no oranges (they were in the privy gardens). But it did have this Myrtle tree from 1736 that was a wedding present to Maria Theresa from the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud I, who ruled Constantinople. I can’t believe this tree survived so long! I can’t even keep succulents alive, but I guess that’s the benefit of being a royal, I’m sure they’ve had expert gardeners through the years. 

While this is nothing on the blooming bushes I found in Jersey, I particularly liked this bougainvillea. 

Mom and I wanted to do one final section before we left the palace and we decided to pick the privy gardens. They were supposed to be beautifully manicured, however they were completely wild and overgrown. It did give the shaded tunnel a particular charm though, I loved how the vines hung from the trellis. 

We were quite exhausted by the time we made it back to our hotel so we dined in and had a lovely curry dinner. The best part of the meal was a Herrentorte cake! It was delicious with layers of marzipan and nougat chocolate and paired nicely with homemade raspberry sorbet. 

It was the perfect way to end the day!

Sending you lots of love,

Carolyn