Isn’t it great when you can wake up in the morning and decide to drive to Vienna for the day. Headed off relatively early and drove the 60 odd kms from Bratislava to the outskirts of Vienna. We had decided to do a park and ride, but that got a bit interesting when the car park was full. We literally had to wait until one car left, before we were allowed in to find that one free car park.

Whilst trying to work out the ticket machine for the underground a couple of tourists handed us transit passes that were still valid for a few days – very nice of them. Jumped the tube to the middle of Vienna and got out at St Stephens Cathedral. We went in and had a look at the cathedral, and went for a guided tour of the crypts underneath. Quite interesting – they had recent bishops and cardinals interred in the new section and bodies and organs of the Hapsburgs. Apparently one of the organ containers sprang a leak and the stench was so bad no one could go down into the crypts for days. The reason there was just organs in the jars as that there were three major churches in Vienna, so not to have favourites, the Hapsburgs had their organs interred at St Stephens, and their bodies interred at the Imperial Crypt at the Capuchin Monastery and their hearts in the St Georges Chapel at Augustinerkirche. The old section of the catacombs are out under the square, and they have mass graves of plague victims, as well as charnel houses, where the bones of previously buried people had been gathered and cleaned by prisoners, and stacked like firewood to create space.

Vienna was not kind to us with the weather. It was about 12 degrees and pouring rain, and we had one umbrella between the 4 of us. Our rain jackets did not prove to be much protection. We walked from St Stephens out to what is arguably ‘the greatest museum on earth’. We passed a few other sites on the way, but decided to give them a miss to get out of the rain. When we got to the museum we discovered that everyone else had the same idea, and there were queues of about 50 people at each door, waiting to get in. Waiting in the rain. Waiting in the cold. Waiting with other people’s umbrellas emptying into your shoes. :o(  When we eventually got into the museum, it was worth even that wait. We took copious amounts of photos that still don’t do it justice. The museum was built specifically by the Hapsburgs as a place to house all of the treasures that they had acquired over the years. The first floor contains artifacts, sarcophagi, marble statues – anything you can think of from the ancient Egyptian, Roman and Greek periods. The Egyptian section was about 10 galleries of amazing stuff, and the Roman and Greek collections were of similar sizes. And that was just the first half of the first floor. The other side of the museum focussed on treasures of the Hapsburgs themselves, and Austrian/Vienna historical objects. More bling than you could poke a stick at.

We spent over two hours on the first floor alone, and then it was time to move up a floor. The second floor was solely comprised of paintings. There were so many masterpieces from so may famous artists it was not funny, although Ben was disappointed that we didn’t find any from Da Vinci. Erica made the comment that they could cure world hunger by selling the contents of this museum. After another hour or so, probably closer to two, we shrugged back into our sodden clothing and headed off back to our car, grabbing a very late lunch on the way. We paid it forward by handing the transit tickets to another couple of travelers and drove back to Bratislava for our final night there.

S