Day 1 in Vienna was all about getting the lay of the land, in more ways than one. There’s the obvious “what does the city look like” view, which the bus was great for. We saw a large swath of the city in sketch form, took in the environs, the geography and so forth. There was a whole ‘nother level that we were breaking the ice on, though. Like we said before, we’d been sticking to relatively familiar environments for our travel since we moved to Europe, and that had led to a high level of comfort – we weren’t likely to be surprised by the people or the food or… whatever, going to the same kinds of places. We only realized in retrospect that we’d maaaaybe possibly become a little nervous about breaking out of the routine, so going to an entirely new locale needed to work like some of us get into a pool – take a step, get used to the temperature, then take another step, then another, until you’re finally ready to sit down and get soggy. We eased into the shallow end of Vienna for that first day. Day 2 is when we sat down.

We began the second day much like the first, walking over to the train station to catch the closest stop of the Hop On Hop Off. Today were using it at least partially as regular public transit. We scooted in to the city center for about 45 minutes before being dropped off right in front of our destination: the Albertina Museum. Like a lot of the history of Vienna, the creation of the Albertina can be broken into major chunks: the accumulation of wealth under the aristocracy followed by the nationalization of the collection in the years after the first World War when the country transitioned to more-or-less democratic rule. The principal claim to fame of the Albertina rests in its world-class collection of prints and graphic works, with a significant number of works by Albrecht Dürer headlining the bunch. The “icon” of the museum is his stunningly rendered hare (which, bee tee dubs, is not really on display for conservation purposes – it’s a fake! A fraud! Ok, understandably, but still. . . ) but they’ve got a mountain of them. John actually preferred these amazing details of bird wings, but what does he know? Along with the “graphic works” there are also a nicely-curated selection of paintings. It’s more “Orsay” than “Louvre”, for space reasons if nothing else, but everything public-facing is first rate, and the temporary exhibition tracing impressionism (and beyond) from Monet through Picasso was particularly informative. Much like the Donatello exhibition we poked around in back in 2022 (and once again – what is this life we’re living when that’s a thing we can say???) the curators did a fantastic job of spelling out the lessons. You could watch the slow shifts, first as the impressionists broke away from literal representation of nature, and through their post-impressionist descendants as they increasingly unmoored themselves from reality altogether. Surrealism makes a lot more sense when you can see how it’s simply on the trajectory of an artistic idea. Practically overwhelmed by that walk through art history, it was a great change of pace to finish with Katharina Grosse’s exhibition involving a huge space completely given over to spray paint. It was riotously colorful, as you can see in the photo up at the top.

Included in our bus ticket was a free 90-minute boat cruise, so we caught the Red Line over to that stop, and hustled over (a few blocks) to catch the last tour of the day. It’s a nice boat, very clean and well-laid-out with indoor and outdoor seating (including an area downwind for smokers). On board table service for basic fare and beverages was available; the menu looked basic, but serviceable, with the variety of beer we were coming to expect as typical). The cruise itself was . . . meh. Very little narration, and all of it pre-recorded, so we had no context for what were cruising by. It would be a nice break, a chance to get off your feet and have a snack, especially during warmer months.

Dinner was at a rustic “classic Viennese cuisine” restaurant that opened in 1447, Griechenbeisl. We were hoping for a good meal, and we got exactly what they promised: classic Viennese cuisine. Nothing nouveau here, just food this city has been consuming for centuries. Beef Tartare, smoked salmon on blinis, vegetable cream soups that rotate through the seasons (we were offered parsnip, the week prior it had been pumpkin), crisp-roasted pig leg (made for two to share) . . . things like that. Lisa had the classic Wiener Schnitzel (veal pounded thin, breaded, and fried; served with a potato-cucumber salad) and John the Daily Special of roast pork (sliced) with spaetzel and gravy. We also ordered a side of steamed vegetables to share. It was delicious! The Schnitzel was moist and hot with a rich flavor complimented by the breading. The pork roast wasn’t quite as good, but flavorful, and the vegetables were perfectly steamed — still crunchy but not raw. We were tempted by dessert, but too full to be able to enjoy it.

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.]