Another beautiful sunny day in this beautiful cosmopolitan city. We started the morning with a walk from our hotel to the Belvedere Palace Gardens. Along the way, we passed this Russian Orthodox Church. Love the onion tops!
An interesting side note: The church is directly across the street from the Iranian Embassy. Armed guards were blocking traffic from the street, but didn’t seem to mind those of us on foot. Later in the day, John encountered more police at the ready during a pro-Palestinian rally. We kept our distance.
Lady lions decorate the entire perimeter of the palace garden.
Nearby buildings reflected in the palace pool.
The palace was the home of Eugene of Savoy until the mid 1700s. He was French, but apparently was “too short and too ugly” to serve Louis XIV. So instead he moved to Vienna and swore his loyalty to the Hapsburgs.
The gardens were replete with spitting fountains and various strange-looking therianthropic sculptures.
From the palace, we walked to the memorial that honors the Soviet soldiers who liberated Austria during WWII. Many thousands died fighting facism.
Fountain and rainbow in Schwarzenbergplatz, adjacent to the war memorial.
After lunch, John walked to the Freud Museum, where he saw the famous psychoanalyst’s sofa…
And of course, Freud’s famous glasses.
I met up with Cecile for a bit more sightseeing. Above is the famous Ankuruhr clock, in which 12 historic figures “walk” across time every day. Here you see Joseph Hayden leaving and Marcus Aurelius entering the one o’clock hour.
The memorial to 65,000 Viennese Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The stern concrete block building is made to look like a library of identical books that can never be opened — so many life stories that never had a chance to be told. The memorial stands in Judenplatz, on the site of a large synagogue that was destroyed when the Jews were murdered and exiled from Vienna in 1421.
The city continues to honor old and new. Many horse-drawn buggies ferry around tourists. This one is outside the famous Cafe Central.
Cecile also showed me some “hidden gems” of Vienna.
Finally, today’s Pastry of the Day was a chocolate brownie with nuts, topped with chocolate cream, and served with lavender ice cream on top of sautéed pears in cinnamon. Truly decadent.
How am I ever going to eat American food again?
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