Our morning mission was to travel to Schonbrunn Palace, not only as tourists but as performers with a 10 am concert scheduled in front of the palace. (http://events.wien.info/en/8gm/voices-of-the-world/) So we were up early (I'd call it 0-dark-thirty, but daylight is evident at 4:00 am and even today our "good morning" call was not until 6:30), putting on costumes and makeup. With the heat we've been having, we opted for wearing a black and white top with our black travel knit tanks and pants rather than the turquoise sweater. We were pleasantly surprised when the morning was a bit cooler than it has been, although the temperatures were still headed well into the 80s.
On the bus we were met by our city guide, Sabina, who narrated as we navigated through the city to the summer palace, making good time even though it was 8:00 am commute time on a Friday morning.
We arrived at 8:30 and began by touring the palace (oh, and once again no photographs allowed inside), which was to take an hour, giving us a half hour to warm up before we sang. But by 9:30 we were only about halfway through, and we were slowed having to wait for groups ahead of us to finish and exit a room before we entered. So when we spied an exit, we opted to break out of the tour in order to have adequate time to prepare for our performance.
The performance was organized through Voices of the World, and we were to be met by a professional photographer to take our official tour portrait. But the only official-looking person with a camera was jogging around the palace following two runners and another man with a boom mic. When they circled a second time we realized it was likely contestants from The Amazing Race TV show, so we'll have to follow their next season to see if we can be heard rehearsing as they ran by!
We found a shady spot to the left of one of the two staircases that curve up from the ground floor, and gave our performance to a very enthusiastic audience. As we were finishing, two women from Voices of the World arrived. The day before, when we realized what the next day's schedule would involve, we had attempted to change our performance to 10:30 am in order to have a bit more time to prepare, but we never heard back. They never got back to us about it, but they assumed we just made the change on our own. So we sang a few more numbers for them and also took pictures with several members of an Asian tour group who had stopped to watch us. The Voices women provided us with souvenirs of the event--note pads, pens, and buttons.
By the time we finished it was nearly time to go back to the bus, but Sabina arranged for us to have ten extra minutes for the gardens or the shops. Once back on the bus, we continued with a city tour, partly on the bus and partly walking.
Among the sites were a building affectionately known as the Golden Cabbage.
Here's part of the royal palace. There was a rule that no two rulers could use the same suite of offices, so each new one had to add on to the existing building and it grew quite large as a result. Now one part is a library, another part was made into apartments, etc.
The Opera:
Then we were given the option to stay downtown or return to the hotel, and everyone chose the latter because we wanted to change clothes into cooler attire.
After a late salad lunch while figuring out what I wanted to do for the afternoon , I took the subway back downtown. While it was walkable, I decided to save my walking for getting around once I got there. I decided to get my dessert first (life is short!) and headed for the Demel coffee house that our tour guide last fall had recommended. The kitchen has a glass wall so you can observe the pastry preparations and I watched as one chef applied rolled fondant icing to a rectangular sheet. There was a cake with a soccer theme that was complete, and two chefs were designing another cake complete with drawings and a model.
I found a table and opted for the truffel torte (completely chocolate--cake, icing, and decorative cocoa powder ridges along the top) and an iced coffee. Viennese coffee shops are definitely not like those in the US. They are meant for lingering, so I ate leisurely but then decided I'd better get on my way.
From there I went to the Albertina Museum and passed the Lippizaner stables along the way.
The Albertina was advertising "Monet bis Picasso", an exhibit of paintings from a private collection donated to the museum spanning impressionists to abstracts, truly from Monet to Picasso with others in between and extending to Joan Miro. I've decided I want to be an impressionist painter when I grow up. In this museum photos without flash were allowed!
A precursor to Monet's large water lily mural paintings:
with detail of some of the lily pads.
And sometimes it is true that you can't see the forest for the trees:
Tonight we had an option to go to a Mozart concert, so on the way back from the subway stop to the hotel I walked through a market in Landstrasse's wide median and picked up a pumpkin seed studded multi-grain roll at the bakery and a small wedge of creamy cheese at the Kase shop, and that was my dinner, with plenty of time to shower and change (lots of showers on these hot days!).
The concert was held in the Musicvereins Gebaude Concert Hall, the one where the famous New Year's Day concert is held each year.
The musicians were all dressed in costumes from Mozart's era, complete with wigs--must be very warm. We were trying to figure out how many are women, since they are all dressed as men.
The concert was completely Mozart, with numbers from some of his operas like the Magic Flute, the Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni, with excellent solists, as well as other popular pieces like Eine Kleine Nacht Music and Rondo alla Turca..exceot the final two numbers were Strauss, first the Blue Danube Waltz and, as on New Year's Day, the Rodetzky March. The conductor led us in clapping in time with the music, directing when to start and stop as well as the desired volume level. It was a wonderful evening of music featuring two of the home-town composers. And we got a souvenir CD too!
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