Vienna

After cruising from Melk, we arrived in Vienna (Austria) with plans to dock in a port outside of Vienna (Wien) for the evening. The docking port outside of Vienna was the furthest from the main city, by far, of any of the ports we stopped at on this river cruise. A bus took us into Vienna that evening for a concert and a bus tour of Vienna at night.

We attended the Vienna Residence Orchestra Mozart and Strauss Concert held in Palais Auersperg. The Vienna Residence Orchestra is a chamber orchestra with small number of ballet dancers and opera singers who participate in a subset of the performed pieces. They did an excellent job presenting pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Strauss within the elegant Palais Auersperg.

We really enjoyed the concert, but a nice unexpected addition was the bus driving around the Innere Stadt and Ringstrasse ("Vienna Ring Road") portions of Vienna at night. A guide described some of the key structures as we passed them and it was a nice opportunity to see them lit up at night.

Because of long-running drought conditions in that area and levels of the Danube River reaching dangerously low levels for the river cruise ships, it was decided that we'd cruise to Bratislava (Slovakia) dock there for the night. I wasn't terribly disappointed in this because the Vienna port was far enough away from Vienna to require more effort to get into Vienna on one's own from the ship. We would bus from Bratislava to Vienna the next morning for our full day in Vienna.

When we arrived in Vienna by bus this next morning, the bus driver drove the bus through the city to allow us to see several of the sightings we had seen the previous evening. Just as it was great to see the city lit up the evening before, it was now nice to see the impressive city at daytime. We saw again saw several of the major sightings along and inside of the Ringstrasse.

The bus dropped us off in Vienna at the Neptune Fountain near Albertina Museum. That was our starting point for a walking tour of that area of the city.

The public square Josefsplatz was crowded, but was worth visiting.

Although we did not view the Spanish Riding School, we were able to view some of the Lippizzan horses and their home at Stallburg.

Although we did not go inside, the exterior of the Hofburg Palace was as impressive as one would expect.

At the bottom of the photograph of Hofburg Palace shown immediately above, one can see a bit of the Roman ruins found in front of that palace. The next photograph shows them a little bit closer.

Our tour guide led us to Kärntner Straße next.

These photographs are of the Vienna Pestsäule (Plague Column).

St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom) is described in Vienna: Once an Imperial Capital, today a Major European City of Culture as, "Vienna's most recognizable landmark and Austria's finest Gothic edifice."

We elected to participate in the optional tour of Schönbrunn Palace.

After touring significant rooms inside of Schönbrunn Palace, we walked around portions of the exterior and gardens, though there was far more to see than we had time for. (We purchased a copy of Schönbrunn Palace: Guide to the palace for its photographs of the interior.)

Spending a single day in Vienna is not even close to long enough to see a significant subset of the city's attractions. However, to really see a lot more of Vienna would have required significantly more time as many of its attractions are museums, concerts, and other cultural offerings that can take quite a bit of time to enjoy.