no title

Captions for images: Top is St. Stephen's Cathedral. Next 3 are details on buildings that I just liked! Next comes the Palais Kinsky- 1713 that I passed on a walk and went in, randomly. Bottom shows Rich, Michele and Carl on a cold walk!

I am finding that coming up with a catchy title for these things is getting harder! So I am not going to do it!

Ok, now to get back to chronology-Back to Saturday where I left off.

Rich decided to buy a bike for himself because the bike paths in this city are too good to pass up! He found a used bike that doesn't look like something someone would steal (apparently that is a problem here) So Saturday morning he spent doing that, while I went walking again. (That is when I saw the Palais Krinsky, above) After lunch we met Michele and Carl Brezovec who are sort of related- Our niece Sharon's husband is Michele's brother. Anyway, Carl and Michele are here for a semester with a group of students from Franklin Pierce College where he teaches. They have been here since January and seem to know the city center pretty well. We met them at St. Stephen's Cathedral and first went inside for a tour of the catacombs. This church is the main cathedral in the center of Vienna (built 1230-1440) and significantly bombed during WWII and then rebuilt. The square around the church is really the main city center and meeting place for all Vienna. Various royalty are entombed there, but not terribly exciting.

After that Michele and Carl took us walking along various small and cute alleyways. The painted picture of the cow playing backgammon was from that walk. The streets are really remnants of the medieval city, with signposts and very picturesque angles and buildings.

Later in the walk, we saw the building with the mosaics on the facade, mid- 20th century, and the apothocary shop facade was created by Oskar Laske(1901) who was a student of Otto Wagner.

Then of course, we had to stop for coffee and... so they took us to their favorite place- Deglas. Very traditional coffee house with the best apple strudel I have ever had! And cool bathrooms with glass doors that cloud over when you lock the door!

We took a short break and then met them again for dinner at a German restaurant they knew, then went together to an organ concert at St. Peter's Church- a church that defines the word Baroque! More gold paint and gilt than I have ever seen in one place! Unfortunately, it was too dark to take pictures, but the music was really stirring in that environment.

So that was just another day in Vienna...