The sun rose up on our last day in Vienna. If you’re thinking that seems quick, well yeah – the whole point of the trip was just to take nibbles of new places; if we love either of them, we can always go back for more. That is, after all, the whole point of moving over here. Good news / bad news situation: we have indeed loved our time in Vienna, which means we’re also a little sad that it’s coming to an end. Alas, alack. Our last day is jam-packed, however, including an actual, honest-to-goodness bucket list item for Lisa. By the time the sun sets on this day, we’ll actually be in transit to our next destination. But that’s then, and this is now. Well, kinda. Verb tenses are complicated for a reason. In any case, let’s finish up Vienna!

It may surprise some of you to know that Lisa was horse-mad as a young girl. Lacking money, she had no choice but to grow out of it, but seeing the Lipizzaner stallions has been a bucket list item for decades. (Even John knew what they were and thought they were cool, he just never put two and two together that they were in Vienna.) So, of course this was a tent-pole event for this trip and Lisa booked tickets about as soon as the flights…. which was good, as it seems the daily practices sell out almost immediately — even in the off-off-season. They were the first thing on our agenda for the day, so we’re up and out and show up (at a palace, mind you, which really threw us off for a moment) about 15 mins before the show begins. A woman in charge of the queue checks everyone’s’ tickets and, seeing ours, waves us to the front of the line – she doesn’t stay with us, though, so now it’s just a couple of Americans banging their way through the crowded queue for no obvious reason, truly irritating a few folks including one woman who would NOT let us by until an employee made her — we kept apologizing and explaining that we were just doing what they told us to do). It seemed to be because our seats were on the ground just behind the low wall around the arena, as opposed to up in the galleries where most people were.

It was carefully and repeatedly explained to everyone that once the stallions came out, all film and photography was forbidden. No explanation was given, although John’s theory is that the management doesn’t want the magic dulled at all by footage of stallions- and riders-in-training not being at their best. In any case, we have no pictures or video of the horses to show you except from the interwebs.

And, it turns out that what we saw was not a performance, but literally a practice session. Five stallions came out with riders in the classic uniform and proceeded to ride around the arena, seemingly aimlessly. From time to time we’d notice one trotting in place, or doing one of the many “dance” steps they are known for, or drifting elegantly in a diagonal across the arena. It was lovely, but random, and not explained. The first group finished and left, and a second group came out, this time with a trainee (notable for their distinctive not-uniform and hardhat). And more of the same occurred, although we could see how the instructor guided the trainee, so that was a bit of insight. No acrobatics. No kicks. Nothing choreographed.

It turns out that PERFORMANCES only happen on Sundays (or on tour) and that is where you want to place your tent pole. Was it interesting? Yes, if you have some knowledge of horses, dressage, or the Lipizzaners. We weren’t exactly disappointed, but definitely felt our appetites more whetted than sated. Our next visit will absolutely be planned around a performance of these magnificent critters.

The arena itself is lovely and everything is oriented around the horses and their personalities. The arena actually is kind of crazy – if you removed the sand and put in a marble floor (and probably some more insulation) you’d have a ballroom as grand as any. To this day when riders first enter the space, they doff their hats in salute to their long-dead patron as thanks for the facilities. Kitschy or not, it’s not surprising. The horses are stabled not far from this practice and performance space, and a set of horse boxes look through a courtyard to the street bisecting the two areas; the keepers call them the “TV boxes”. It turns out that the horses here are particularly interested in watching the world go by and spend long hours just checking things out.

Afterwards, we met up with Robert, the walking tour guide included with our bus tickets. (To put a final answer to the question “are the tickets for the hop on hop off worth it?”, we’d say it depends on if you’re going to use it all. We got bus access for two days, the boat cruise, and a guided walking tour of downtown. We were very satisfied.) For the next 90 minutes he took us through the center of Old Town, explaining architecture, art, and typical lifestyle of the Viennese throughout history. It was thoroughly engaging and interesting, placing much of what we’d seen in passing over previous days into context, and whetting our appetite for future visits. It was particularly interesting to us that, for all that we felt charmed by the “old World” vibe, he pointed out numerous examples of modern living forcing out the old ways. Numerous bespoke businesses that had been owned by families for generations were being forced out by the typical encroachers – H&M, Gap, Target and so on. For the life of him John can’t find a photo that we took, but – there was an H&M on a main street that our guide pointed out. He had to point it out because it was a gorgeous, art deco structure with inlaid wood everywhere and almost no modern signage. Even the interior, visible through the beautifully huge windows, had that charming craftsmanship. The signage was modest all things considered. It turns out that the building had been sold at firesale prices in the 1930s by a Jewish family business that had to get out of town. By city decree the building has to be kept up as it was as a memorial, there apparently having been no remaining family to initiate a claim. We were given his opinion on places to eat, drink, and shop, and overall he rated favorably to many other tours we’ve been on over the years. It was one of the better perks of our Big Bus ticket.

From there, we went to lunch at the aquarium. Called the Haus des Meeres (House of Fish), it was converted from a 47-meter-tall flak tower in late 1943. It’s an odd building in many ways, and we’re told the aquarium is neat . . . but we were there because there is a restaurant on the top floor reputed to have great views of the city. Lunch was fine — nothing special, but freshly prepared and tasty. (Lisa had a hummus bowl, and John had the Caesar Salad with chicken.) The view, however, was truly spectacular (and would look even better at night, so go here for a drink before your meal out.) Naturally, we took no pictures…. sigh.

Our day was wrapping up, but our night was just beginning. Join us next week when we detail the wonders of going to sleep in Vienna and waking up in Amsterdam, courtesy of the choo choo train.

We’ve lived in Europe for a little more than two years now. In that time, as regular readers have seen, we’ve taken advantage of our new environs numerous times to visit some truly wonderful places. Impromptu birthdays in Pompeii, beach trips to the south of France, we’ve been to all sorts of lovely destinations. The thing is, though… the thing is, everywhere we’ve been to have been places that were more or less comfortable, even familiar to us. Before we ever moved here we’d been to France several times; ditto Italy. Sure, we went to a few different locales, but we knew how to poke around the language, we knew what to expect from the food, we more or less knew what we were getting ourselves into. More and more we’ve been poking each other about the fact that we weren’t really putting the “adventure” into our new life of adventure. So, what the hell, we basically threw darts at a map and came up with this week: a few days in Vienna, an overnight train, and a few days in Amsterdam before heading home. Whee!

If you’re thinking “3 days isn’t really long enough to see a place” we couldn’t agree with you more! This isn’t about truly plumbing the depths of these locales, it’s about going to places we know basically nothing about, understanding even less of the language than usual, and flinging ourselves into the deep end and splashing around for awhile. And believe us, we know this is still cheating a little bit. We’re still in developed nations within the European Union – there’s plenty of places further afield than these two spots. But hey! It’s a start.

Speaking of starts (come on, admit it – you missed our segues) we began this trip a lot more reasonably than some of our other go ’rounds. This time we boarded our bus to Porto at a very reasonable 9:30 AM, and then checked in for our flight with a couple of hours to spare. A cheap deal on last-minute seat upgrades meant that we could hang out in the fancy-pants lounge before making our way to our gate. By the way – should you ever need/want to avail yourself of such a lounge in Porto, be aware that there’s one lounge supporting most (all?) of the airlines. It’s actually pretty good as these things go, but it’s definitely the white-label version of such things. (And extra FYI – if you’ve got the Priority Pass thingie that is a perk of numerous rewards programs, this lounge is on the list.) We flew via Austrian Airlines, which felt a little scruffy but in a loveable way. A couple-ish short hours later, we arrived in Vienna. The rest of our first day was basically just checking into our hotel and settling in before going off to enjoy a lovely dinner at Veranda.

Couple of things about dinner. First and least, if you click the link you can see the table we sat at; it’s the first photo in the rotation. That’s the best we can do for now, as we continue to never feel like breaking out our phones during dinner to take snippy snaps. While dinner and accommodations didn’t tempt us, the other diners damn near did. As we later pieced together, we were actually dining in the arts district of Vienna during the end of their version of Mardi Gras. Now, if you think of “festivities in Vienna” the image that probably pops up in your mind (if anything does, I get it’s not an all-time callout) is those super fancy balls that they host around New Years; men in tuxedos (black or white tie, take your pick) and ladies in full gowns. Welp, turns out that’s how they celebrate a lot of things! When we arrived, the restaurant clientele was plus-or-minus looking like us – slacks/sweater or dress & shawl, take your pick. There was even a dude in a hoodie. By the time we left, however, multiple tables sported folks that were clearly having dinner before going to the ball. The table next to us was hall-of-fame worthy for people watching. Two(?) families that largely didn’t know each other, being brought together by college student(?) friends. Eight people, tuxedos and gowns all around, happily and animatedly chatting in at least three different languages. We’d think we had sussed out the nationality of one of the people, but when their language switched they’d sound just as fluent and natural in that tongue as well. It was almost as much fun for us as it seemed to be for them.

The food was great. We were offered two kinds of bread, a sourdough and a rye, accompanied by fresh butter and a cream cheese with cumin, coriander, paprika, and curry. An amuse bouche followed soon after we ordered, local char with (tiny!) pickled cherries, and sunflower seeds. We shared our dishes. Starting with pickled beets with smoked yogurt, pickled physalis, and buckwheat that was superb. Almost as good was a ceviche of local char accompanied by a (divine) sweet potato curry cream, macadamia nuts, and pickled rowan berries. Excellent (although the rowan berries were just frippery.) Our main was beef cheeks, potato puree, carrots and lingonberries. Lisa enjoyed an Austrian red from Salzl, Illmitz Osterreich (Late Harvest Red, 2022).

Our next day (which is today, bee tee dubs) we leaned into that old stand-by: the hop on hop off bus. We’ve talked about it before, but we do love a good, tourist-trap-ified double decker bus. Corny they may be, but if you’re in a new place and want to get the lay of the land, these things take you to where you want to go. For reasons of later practicality we’re staying at a hotel near the main train station so grabbing the bus was like a 10 minute affair. From there, we took one of their two routes, saving the other one for tomorrow. We were shown where a dozen of the most attractive sites in the city are located; most helpfully, we saw these in context, so we’ve already mapped out better itineraries for our next couple of days than we’d originally drawn up. We had originally planned to use the tour as a jumping-off point for taking it at least one or two of the sites around town, but a) the weather absolutely #&(*@&# sucks today, and John is nursing an ouchy in one leg that would probably benefit from a night off. So, instead we regrouped in the room before heading out to dinner at the SKY Cafe & Restaurant. We didn’t end up thinking much of the vaunted city view (perhaps because you only sit inside this time of year) but the food was top notch. We accidentally had an all vegetarian meal and didn’t even notice until we were almost done. After this it was back to the room to recover for the next day and, of course, write all this. On top of all this adventure it’s also Super Bowl Sunday, so at least one of us is staying up for a bit. [Ed. note: John did. Lisa was a sane human and went to bed.]