Stallions, Palaces, and Opera Oh My!

Our first stop at the Hofburg was the Spanish Riding School. We had tickets to see the Lipizzaner stallions. No pics were allowed as it "irritated" the horses! You can see the detail here in the school - like the rest of the palace. We don't know much about horses or riding, but this was pretty incredible. They start out with the younger stallions and show the easy things and then move into the more skilled stallions who can do the airs above the ground and the other difficult moves. Everything is synchronized to music and is pretty incredible.

It's hard to get a real sense of how large the Hofburg Palace is from these pictures. Hopefully you can get an idea of the detail on the buildings.

Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures in the Imperial Apartments. I snapped this pic of Brent just before he starts up the Emperor's Stairway. I'm not sure what the thought behind this is...I understand the flash aspect and maybe it's because people forget and take flash shots anyway. How am I expected to scrapbook without photos - oh yes, postcards purchased in the gift shop where you end up at the end of the tour. LOL!

Part of the tour of the Hofburg includes a tour of the silver and china. We pretty much buzzed thru this, but I did pause to take a few pics of things I liked the best. First of all, you cannot imagine how many different table settings there were and how many of each were included. Hard to imagine all these things survived. One of the things we found interesting were that each diner had their own carafe of water and wine and their own salt cellar. This first picture shows one of the patterns that was a gift from Marie Antoinette.


I just liked this floral pattern for some reason.

Can you imagine how large a table you would need to carry this sucker off?

This is the entrance to the Imperial Treasury. I was surprised that we could take pictures in here - go figure. It didn't make sense to me that we couldn't take them in the Imperial Apartments but we could take them here. I'm not greedy. I'd take the smallest of gems!

This first crown was a gift from the Turks. Any Turks need a friend...I'm available!

Horse-drawn carriages are outside many of the "attractions" in Vienna, lined up just like taxis in NYC!

I love the colors of all the buildings: yellow, peach, blue, and this sort of coral color. This is where the symphony performs each New Years Eve. This is supposed to be quite a show, very expensive and requiring reservations years in advance.

One of the things I most wanted to do while in Vienna (Wien, pronounced Veen) was to attend an opera. I don't really like opera, but I figured if I were ever to attend one it would have to be here. We opted to attend an operetta written by an Austrian, Franz Lehar. It's called Das Land des Lachelns, or The Land of Smiles. I was very excited to be here, as you can tell by the photo. We had read about the general story line before coming here, but it really helped that they flashed some English translation at the top of the curtain...just like subtitles!