One Week in Vienna: Overview + Pictures

Happy Toussaint everyone! I got back from Vienna yesterday evening after spending a wonderful week visiting my friend Brooke. We got to do, see and eat lots of cool things, but as you can probably expect, an spending an entire week there means that I have lots and lots to tell you about and lots of pictures (425 to be exact, including the ones Brooke gave me). So this entry is going to be a quick list, plus some photos, and then I'll write another entry with some general thoughts, fun stories, etc.


Tuesday, Oct 25 (Dienstag)

• Military History Museum with Joe (Brooke's friend she met here in Vienna)

• Tour of the 1st district of Vienna by car (all of the buildings around the Ring, the road which traces medieval boundaries of the city of Vienna, and is now lined with most of the city's important buildings and monuments)

• Lunch at Cafe Sperl (one of Vienna's more famous cafes, apparently it was Hitler's favorite, and will most recently be featured in a movie about Freud called A Dangerous Method which comes out in the US on Nov. 23) -- my dish was something like a risotto meets polenta, very creamy and delicious

• The Sucession Gallery -- the building constructed to house the art of the Succession Movement, a group of Viennese artists at the beginning of the 20th century, led by Gustav Klimt. The part that interested me was the Beethoven freize, which unfortunately you're not allowed to photograph at all. The rest of the museum was ultra-contemporary exhibits, like a room full of mirrors. 

• Drinks at the Bisamburg heurigen (East-Austrian wine tavern, their version of a pub, but with very specific regulations as to when it can be open and what they can serve -- usually the most recent year's wine). This night we had red wine Sturm, a beverage made of wine which is not quite fermented and thus is sort of in between grape juice and wine. It's sold during a short period of the year, typically September through the end of October.

Wednesday, Oct 26  (Mittwoch) -- Austrian Independence Day

• Parades and fair at the Hofburg Palace with Anna Butler, a friend from Wake who is currently the graduate advisor at Wake Forest's house in Vienna, the Flow House (this is the job Brooke did this past summer). -- So technically the Austrian restoration of sovereignty happened during the spring of 1955, but the treaty didn't go into effect until Oct. 26 of that year, so that's the day they celebrate. This event was sort of a weird combination of a fair (lots of food stands) and an exposition. There were parades of soldiers, but also exhibits with helicopters and military convos where little kids could sit inside and there were displays of information about the various aspects of the Austrian military (such as the medical corps, the emergency rescue teams, the HAZMAT units, etc). It was sort of a strange mix, and a little funny to see all of this set up in the courtyard of the Hofburg Palace. Brooke is holding up a langos, which she and I split. The fried dough had a delicious garlicky flavor (I thought it was going to be sweet, but this was even better).

• Lunch at Cafe Central with Anna too -- I had a potato soup (not worth photographing), but we all got pastries for dessert and I thought mine merited a photo.

• Karlskirche -- They're currently restoring the frescoes on the dome and so there's an elevator set up which takes you all the way up to the top! I've never been so close to the paintings on the top of a church before. You could see how the pictures were slightly distorted, so that they would appear normal from way down below. And at the very, very top, the "pillars" of the dome weren't actually marble, just painted to look that way! You can sort of see on the picture of the angel holding the laurel wreath how the "shimmery gold" bits were actually a completely different color, so that from all the way at the bottom it would just look like natural highlighting.

• Stephansdome and a candlelit mass -- Brooke and I stopped in Stephansdome just to look around and happened to arrive right as a candlelit mass was starting (probably to celebrate the Independence Day). It was really cool to see the cathedral all lit up and full of people!

• Dinner at a little Italian restaurant and then a coffee afterwards at Aumann (Joe joined for both)

Thursday, Oct 27 (Donnerstag)

• Brooke went to her German class, I got some coffee at Cafe Mozart (across from the Albertina) and then went to the Museum of Vienna -- this museum was really interesting and well done, but I found it strange that the third floor did not have English translations for the German signs on the exhibits. I only went through floors two and three (Viennese culture from 1500-present), so maybe the first floor didn't have translations either. But it seemed odd that the second floor would have them while the third wouldn't...

• Lunch at an Ethiopian restaurant (I promise I didn't twist Brooke's arm, she really wanted to try it and was pleased to discover I love Ethiopian food)

• Walking around Stadtpark

Friday, Oct 28 (Freitag)

• Quick coffee at Aida (a bakery chain in Vienna)
• Walking around the 1st district (the picture to the right is me in front of a giant greenhouse which currently has a butterfly exhibit)
• Wurst break! -- According to Brooke this wurst (sausage) stand by the Albertina is the best in Vienna. The Kaiserkrainer was quite tasty!

• National Library -- I'm really surprised I didn't see this last time I was in Vienna -- it's absolutely magnificent. Totally Baroque and very much over the top as far as decoration goes, but how much would I love to belong to a library like that! It also had an exhibit on the different regions of Austria, which was really helpful for me because people would mention them (or I would read about one) and have no idea where it was located.

• Dinner at Do & Co. with an awesome view of Stephansdome

Saturday, Oct 29 (Samstag)

• Lunch at Kim, a restaurant at the Naschmarkt (Vienna's most popular market)

• Art Fakes Museum by the Hundertwasserhaus (a house designed by contemporary Austrian architect Hundertwasser. He has a couple of buildings around Vienna)

• "La Sylphide" (a ballet) at the Staatsoper (Vienna Opera House) -- it was awesome!

• Salzburger Nockerln: an enormous dessert that Brooke absolutely insisted we get while I was in Vienna. She described it as "souffle-ish" and while at first I complained that description was unhelpful, it was actually quite accurate. I think the vanilla sauce was what made it so yummy. The whole thing is supposed to imitate the mountains around the city of Salzburg.

Sunday, Oct 30 (Sonntag)

• Bike ride down the Danube that turned into quite an adventure -- this one will get its own blog entry!

A Weekend in Lyon

Guten Tag!!

First off, I cannot guarantee that this entry will not exceed 1200 words. I will do my best, but I'm going to try and cover the 3 days I spent visiting Mary-Kate in Lyon, and we did a lot. I also took over 100 pictures, and many of them will appear here.

Saturday:

Mary-Kate met me at the Gare Part-Dieu (Lyon's main train station), when I arrived around 10:30am. I could tell even by the size of the train station that Lyon is a much bigger city than Besancon. First we dropped off my suitcase at Mary-Kate's studio apartment -- luckily I was able to borrow a smallish suitcase from GuiGui, because otherwise I was going to have to make due with my backpack. Mary-Kate lives a little east of the city center, east of the Rhone. Lyon is divided into three main sections by two rivers: the Saone and the Rhone. On the far west bank is vieux Lyon (the oldest part of the city, where there are still the remains of Lugdunem, a Roman city) and the neighborhood Fourviere, where the 19th century basilica Notre-Dame de Fourviere is located. In between the two rivers is the presqu'ile, where Place Bellecour, one of the main squares, is located. And then on the west bank, on the far side of the Rhone, is Part-Dieu and the economic/commercial center.

Before setting out to explore the city, we first sought some sustenance at a restaurant called Le Bouchon des Carnivoires. I guess the name should have given us an indication, but the cafe was definitely meat-themed. There were large-game heads mounted on the walls too -- not something I expected. Mary-Kate and I both got the menu du jour: terrine de sanglier maison (sort of like a cold meatloaf made of wild boar meat), agneau en pot au feu (lamb stew with cabbage, carrots, and celery), and fondant au marrons (sort of like cheesecake, but made with chestnuts). It was all delicious and quite filling!

Next we walked across the Saone to walk around vieux Lyon. First off we went inside Cathedrale St. George, a beautiful white Gothic-style church. We were just inside the front door when we came across two girls who looked to be about our age. And who turned out to be Wake students! Mary-Kate recognized one of them from her French tutoring!! They are currently studying abroad through the Dijon program and they were in Lyon just for the day. We all exchanged information and I offered to house them should they ever decide to come to Besancon. What a small world!

Then we continued walking through vieux Lyon (we were making our way toward the Roman amphitheater by way of vieux Lyon's cute little back streets). Next we stopped in Cathedrale St. Jean. This cathedral happened to contain a beautiful and enormous astrological clock, parts of which date back to 1583 (the plaque said that the clock is mentioned in documents with that date). The church also had a beautiful rosace entitled "Le Vitrail des deux Adams" (The Window of Two Adams). Beginning with the circle at the top and moving clockwise around the rosace, each of the smaller circular windows describes the lives of Adam and Jesus, respectively. I thought that the front of the church was very unique, with it's very pointed arches on the first level and then the traditional rosace up higher.

There's also a cute little square in front of Cathedrale St. Jean, with lots of cafes. Vieux Lyon has a layout which is very distinctive from the other areas of the city which were built more recently. The streets in vieux Lyon date back to the Middle Ages, and the narrow streets open up to little courtyards/squares quite frequently. Since much of the presqu'ile and other parts of Lyon are distinctively Hausmannian (think the wide boulevards and tall 19th-century apartment buildings of Paris), this difference is even more noticeable here than it would be in say, Besancon.

I'm not 100% sure why Lyon is known for its bouchons (corks), but they seemed to be sort of a bouchon motif around the city. These were actually chocolates shaped like corks.

The guignols, or puppets, which are a French mainstay, were apparently invented in Lyon. There was a little guignol museum in vieux Lyon and these chocolate guignol-cards are doubly appropriate, because a long time ago Lyon was a center for the printing of playing cards.

Anyway, we continued our trek up the west bank. We decided to walk instead of take the tram (le funiculaire), and ended up getting a bit turned around. We just kept walking up (at one point we climbed A LOT of stairs) and ended up at the very top of Fourviere near the basilica. The view was incredible! The basilica, Notre-Dame de Fourviere was pretty impressive too. Although it looks old, it was built in the mid-1800s, which makes it quite new for Lyon. Mass was just beginning when we arrived, so unfortunately I  
didn't get to see very much of the basilica or take many pictures. It was sort of nice to see such a beautiful church being used by a real congregation though!

We took the funiculaire back down to Vieux Lyon and took another line back up to the Roman amphitheater (we had walked a lot at this point, and sundown would be coming soon -- we wanted to get there before it got back!) The amphitheater is part of the remains of Lugdunum, the Roman city which was located where Lyon stands today. I was really impressed by how much of the amphitheater is still intact!

So that night we cooked dinner at Mary-Kate's apartment and afterwards went out for a drink near Place Terreau (where the Hotel de Ville -- city hall -- and the Fine Arts Museum are both located).

Sunday:


We slept in quite late and then went to a market along the Saone. We thought it was going to be an artisan/craft market, but it turned out to be more of the typical weekend farmers' market. That was okay though -- I got to take lots of pretty pictures and we bought fruit to have with lunch and vegetables for dinner that evening.

We took the fruit to St. Jean's square in vieux Lyon, bought sandwiches from a store nearby, and had a delicious little picnic. There were lots of people eating in the cafes around the square, and a small crowd of rowdy rugby fans outside a bar on the corner. The New Zealand vs. France Rugby World Cup Final was on Sunday morning, and based on how much singing and dancing was going on, MK and I figured France had won (it turns out they lost 8-7). But that didn't stop these guys from dancing around the accordion player who was trying to serenade the cafe-goers....

After lunch we hit up the Musee Gadagne, a museum of the history of the city of Lyon. It may sound a bit boring, but Lyon has been sort of important for the past 400 years or so (both politically, but also as a center of printing, silk production, etc). The museum was really well done -- lots of variety in the objects that were displayed and a really good (and free!) audio tour. It was quite extensive though, and when we finished around 4pm MK and I were both desperately in need of a little pick-me-up. So we grabbed some coffee at one of the quite little cafes in vieux Lyon, then headed back in the direction of MK's apartment. On the way we came across this little book market -- it looked like the kind of thing which was open every weekend -- and spent lots of time browsing through the books. Most of the paperbacks were 1-2 euro each, and I was very tempted by several, but various people (Steff and Charly, teachers, etc) have loaned me books in French and so I really don't need to be lugging around others. But it was cool to look:

We made dinner at Mary-Kate and her friend Mathilde came over. MK met Mathilde in the hostel when she first arrived in Lyon and was trying to find a place to live. I asked Mathilde if she thought that there were more babies/bigger families now than in the recent past. She confirmed that France's birth replacement rate has actually increased in the last few years (I wondered if it was just Besancon, but noticed there were lots of families in Lyon too). Anyway, we had a great time and Mathilde brought a really yummy apple crumble. Afterward we walked around the presqu'ile taking pictures with the churches and buildings all lit up:

 Monday:

My last day in Lyon, we headed to the Musee Beaux-Arts (fine arts museum) because I had heard great things. It turns out that their collection is mostly Italian and Flemish art, and mostly before 1800. Honestly this visit to the museum reminded me how little I know about art. I took one art history class in Dijon, and that was French art and focused on the 19th century and onward. I still have so much more to learn!

After the museum we had lunch at a cute little place called Cafe 203. Then we went for a bike ride on a route Mary-Kate had found as a nice tour of the city. We saw the painted building, which portrays famous artists and authors from Lyon. There's a building across the street with windows painted on, can you tell which ones are real? (smaller picture on right)

Then we made our way to the Parc de la Tete d'Or, one of the largest urban parks in France. It opened in 1857, the same year as Central Park in NYC. It has a zoo, 8,800 trees and 30,000 flowers (thanks to Wikipedia for those last two stats). It was another perfect day to be outside -- sunny with brisk autumn air and a light breeze. I wish we could have spent all afternoon there, but we had to get back so I could make my plane to Vienna! I had a really wonderful weekend with Mary-Kate -- very relaxing and laid-back. We spent lots of time exploring the city and I liked Lyon very much. I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting France. That's all for now!