Today was a bit of a slow day, as well. In addition to recovering from the wonderful flurry of fun from the previous day, I also managed to pull my achilles tendon during our afternoon tour of the Hofburg Palace. I tried to find new shoes but nothing affordable is to be found in Vienna!
Our first stop was at the Hofburg Palace (the residence of the Habsburgs) for a tour of their silver collection and the Sisi Museum.
The silver collection contains all the plates and cutlery and what not required for an empire's household. The Habsburgs had a preference for eating off of gold and silver plates!
They had many gorgeous centerpieces; incredibly lavish and ornate mirrored candelabras and all kinds of table decorations.
Ivory forks and knifes. Ridiculous.
A case of cups!
This is the official way the Habsburg royals had their napkins folded. Apparently, the secret to getting the napkin like this is a closely guarded secret, and is only passed down by word of mouth. Currently, only two people know how to fold these napkins. I was itching to get my hands on one so I could try it out!
This is a duck press, so you could squeeze all the juice out of a carcass. Empress Elisabeth is said to have squeezed juices out, boil them, and eat them as part of her diet. She had a lot of weird diets.
This plate has a volcano painted on it!
Silver and Goldsparkle.
After the silver collection, we visited the Sisi Museum, also housed at the Hofburg. Empress Elisabeth, or Sisi, as she was called, has become a bit of a weird cult figure, ever since some Vienna publicity person decided to make her a tourist attraction. She was married to Emperor Franz Josef, who loved her with all his heart, but she rebelled and hated royal life, and did as much as possible to avoid all official duties and functions. She was reclusive, and if you ask me, kind of a jerk. She had four children, the oldest died young, and her only son, the future heir, ended up committing suicide. Sisi was exceptionally beautiful, and had thick, curly ankle-length hair which took several hours to arrange every day. Sisi had a 20"waist, and stuck to a strict exercise regiment everyday to stay slim. She also tried some unusual beauty treatments, like sleeping with a raw veal steak on her face, under a leaf mask. She ended up getting assassinated in Geneva when she was about 60, I believe. She was finally free of the constrains of royal life.
After her tragic death, she became even more popular, and this reclusive woman, who was rather bitter and resentful about her life, became a cult icon.
Sisi with her dress of silver stars, and her silver star hair pins adorning her long beautiful hair.
Another shot of the Lippizaner Stallion stables.
About this time is when I hurt my ankle, and so I wobbled back to the hotel to assess the damage. After resting a bit, I took the U-Bahn a few stops to the Naturhistoriches (Natural History) Museum, to see my idol! But along the way, I found some pretty fun critters:
And then I arrived at the temple of my idol, the Venus of Willendorf, who got her own little house in the museum. This statue was the first object I ever saw in my first Art History Survey class, and it has stuck with me ever since. The statue dates to around 30,000 BC, and is one of the oldest examples of art we have.
Although rather buxom, this lovely lady is only about 3 inches tall!
You can see her there in the background.
The Naturhistoriches Museum was gorgeous!
Across the Maria Theresia plaza is a twin building, the Kuntshistoriches Museum (Kunst meaning Art), where I met up with Mike for a tour of some non-Viennese artwork.
Raphael's Madonna of the Meadow!
Pieter Bruegel's The Hunters in the Snow. Bruegel's always make me think of a novel we had to read in class titled Headlong, about a man who thinks he's found a missing Bruegel, and the lengths he goes through to acquire it!
In the elevator at the Kunsthistoriches Museum. Mike doesn't like his picture taken so he's hiding in the corner!
Theseus on the staircase at the museum.
They have their own "William" here, only he's just called "Nilpferd", or hippo.
Dinner was a delightful pick by Mike! I had this delicious pumpkin soup, which I'd been seeing on all the menus around town so I had to try it.
Then I got a wiener schnitzel! It was as big as my head!
I ordered desert for both of us in German, which was fun to practice. Mike got an apfelstrudel and a melange (a popular form of coffee).
And I got a little trio of deserts and a melange, although after that huge meal neither of us could finish!
I retreated to the hotel after dinner, thoroughly sugared and warmed on the inside, wandering through the twinkling Christmas lights of the markets, with little thought to my wounded ankle, and nothing but growing fondness for this glittering city.
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