Month: March 2017

There is not much to report today. We took the train from Bratislava to Budapest. We are now at the farthest east point we will be on this trip. 

We plan to be in Budapest for three days which will be a nice rest. We spent the afternoon napping and vegging out at our hotel. 

Tonight for dinner we found a very nice Hungarian restaurant. We started with bean goulash. Then Duke had steak and I had pork tenderloin. We finished with  a traditional cake desert. 

We spent today exploring Bratislava. Because today is Monday no museums are open.  That didn’t stop us from having fun. We climbed up to the castle that overlooks Bratislava. 

The view of the Danube from the top is great. 

Bratislava has some wonderful statues. 

Here is Hans Christian Andersen. 

We ate dinner in our hotel. 

Today we moved down the Danube to Bratislava the capital of Slovakia. It was only about an hour train ride from Vienna. It is another gray rainy day here so it was a good day to travel.  

The Bratislava train station is surprisingly small and dingy. Both Duke and I had the same reaction. To us it seems like you can still see the communist influence from thirty years ago.

 We are staying in a lovely hotel very near the historic town center called Hotel Marrol. 

We walked around the town center. 

And then stopped in a cafe for cake and coffee. 

For dinner we ate at a restaurant called Flamender not too far from our hotel. It was wonderful. 

We have been very lucky with weather on this trip but today we woke up to wind and rain. 

We put on our rain coats and took the subway into central Vienna. Although it was extremely windy the temperature was not bad (10 c/ 50 f). And although it rained on us a bit it was never a downpour and we managed to not blow away. 

We started at Albertina Museum. They have art from all the modern artists that I know and a lot more.  It was fun to see the second painting below because it is a Cezanne, and we visited his studio in Aix en Provence. 

Next we took a tour of the Vienna State Opera. We looked into getting seats for a performance tonight but they are sold out. Standing room goes on sale two hours before the performance but I don’t want to stand. We plan to go through Vienna again next week and we are thinking about arranging our itinerary to attend then. 

The tour of the Opera House was fascinating. Here are some bits of information that I found especially interesting.  The Opera House seats 2,300 people. The most expensive seats are €250. Standing room costs €3 or €4 depending on where you stand. 

Although they always sing the opera in the original language each seat has its own screen where they display subtitles in English or German. 

The opera is subsidized by the government. They put on a different ballet or opera every night. The ten month season includes a repertoire of 50 operas 25 ballets. 

After finishing our tour we did the Rick Steves walking tour of Vienna. I have his app on my phone so we just followed his directions. We saw St. Stephens Cathedral. 

We went into St Peters and listened to a free organ concert with a soloist singing. 

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We ended up at the Hofburg Palace. 

We took the subway back to our hotel and rested our feet for a while. Right now we are sitting in the lounge on the 57th floor. The view is stupendous The wind is blowing so hard that it is howling in the elevator shaft behind us. 

Today we took the train from Graz to Vienna. On the train the young lady across from us was quietly singing along to opera music with her Beats headphones on, which only seems right since Vienna is considered the music capital of Europe. 

We took the subway to our hotel in Vienna. We are staying in the tallest building in the city. The hotel is right on the Danube. The view is stupendous!

We had drinks and snacks on the top floor (57).