Vienna III 07/01/2006

Guess what I did today? ..... Yupp sight seeing. I spent the entire day walking around the city exploring the historical sites.

The "Albertina Museum" - an interesting mix of modern and historic architecture. I saw an exhibition about the life and work of Mozart here. It also provided a pretty good background about the "times", the social, political and economic conditions and the challenges of those days.

The "Alte Hofburg" home of the ruling Habsburg family. Their reign ended after over 600 consecutive years with the end of World War I in 1918. This is one of the main gates from the historical "downtown area", once you enter and make a left you would see the "Hofreitschule" (the royal horse back riding school), where they train the famous (white) Lipizaner horses.

The ceiling of the main gate you saw above. Just thought it looks kind of cool .....

Another gate to the gardens ofd the "Hofburg". In the garden there was the final event for the "Love Parade" of Vienna that day.... all the streets had been closed off, only bicycles and horse carriages were allowed.

The "Neue Hofburg", a more modern extension of the "Hofburg". In general this whole area is a hodge podge of different architectural styles. Every ruler wanted to leave his / her mark by creating a new and different extension.

Well, shame on me. I do not even remember right now what is depicted here.

A photo of city hall from afar. A wonderful building. Currently there is the film festival right in front of it, with lots and lots of food and wine stands (of course there is food, this is Vienna).

The rose garden of the Hofburg. Very nice, the photo does not give enough credit ..... well and I guess that you noticed that there are no roses in this shot.

Later this day I went to dinner at my friends house and of course we watched Brazil versus France. "Allez les bleus....." After the game we went back to the city to watch the fireworks scheduled for that evening, but when we got there it was all over and we just had drinks at a bar.