VIENNA
Hotel Bristol, Kaerntner Ring 1, Vienna, Austria, 1010
Tel: +43 1-515160
WHAT TO EXPECT - Tauck Tour
Dinner
Breakfast
- Drive along the Ringstrasse and Danube River.
- Guided tour of the Museum of Fine Arts (Kunsthistorisches) and view the Habsburg art collections.
The Museum of Fine Arts houses paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Dürer, Raphael, Titian and Velazquez, as well as the most comprehensive collection of Bruegel's paintings in the world.
Around the Ringstrasse
Afternoon
- Free time.
The history of Schönbrunn and the buildings that previously stood on this site dates back to the Middle Ages from the beginning of the fourteenth century. In 1569 the estate came into Habsburg's possession through Maximilian II, who was primarily interested in extending the game park, breeding native game and fowl.
In 1576 Emperor Matthias used the estate for hunting, and according to a legend is supposed to have come across the Schöner Brunnen (meaning ‘fair spring’), which eventually gave the estate its name, while out hunting in 1612.
His successor, Emperor Ferdinand II's wife, Eleonora von Gonzaga, around 1642, renamed and documented it as Schönbrunn. In 1683 Turkish troops degraded it during the siege of Vienna. From 1686 estate Emperor Leopold I made it a splendid estate for his son and heir, Joseph. In 1688 the Rome-trained architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach designed a new palace, the so-called Schönbrunn I Project, for a display of court and nobility.
Construction from 1743 to 1749 commenced on the imperial apartments in the East Wing with audience rooms and residential suites for Maria Theresa and Franz Stephan, becoming the imperial summer residence.
Maria Theresa painted the palace a golden ochre color and then in the 1770s in a light ochre. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the shade known as Schönbrunn Yellow prevailed as a deliberate reference to the era of Maria Theresa.
THIRD DAY
Afternoon
- Free time again. Dinner:
Our first destination was entering the Hofburg complex to the left of the Burggarten. 
From there we walked to the Jewish Museum before ending our tour near St Stephen Cathedral.
I saved several snippets for everyone's remembrance. 
- Free time again. Dinner:
- Renowned Café Landtmann
- Private concert in a historic Viennese palace featuring the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Strauss.
WHAT WE DID
After about an hour and a half we arrived to Vienna from Bratislava. We met our local guide for our first Vienna hour walk looping from the hotel to the Hofburg Palace passing Albertina, Josefplatz, and Spanish Riding Horses Academy.
This trip was my second stay at the Vienna Bristol Hotel. My wife (Sharyn) and I spent three days on September 15, 2001 with Tauck waiting to be allowed to re-enter the US after the World Center attack. I included a copy of my travel log below.
As I reread that log, I remember that our Tauck group was in fine order. After being stranded in Austria, all forty of us had bonded. We were in a continuous party mood. We didn't know when we would be able to return to the States but we were making the best of our holiday.
We had our farewell party in a private dining room in Bristol.
During diner, several groups of our new friends got up and
entertained the others. We had a rendition of the yodeling cow,
followed by the goat act, we had some songs from other groups, a
Hawaiian farewell song from Shelley (our tour director), and least important, a performance by Terry and the Eight Fraus of "Was ist dis mein dear". A good thing for Terry and the Fraus, the audience only threw their napkins, they had already removed the utensils.
Dinner that evening was at the hotel. It did not go well. The service was horrible. Some of our companions let the waiters know about it. Maybe, it was a good thing that Tauck covered our wine service. Too bad, it just took of us too long to get more than the first glass.
In the morning, we had a bus and hour long tour around the Ringstrasse and a stop for a couple of hours at Vienna's Fine Art Museum. The Ringstrasse is a circular boulevard that surrounds Vienna's historical centre and a home to a large number of the city's most symbolic architectural works, such as the Hofburg Palace, the Rathaus, the Stock Exchange, the Parliament, the Burgtheater, the Votivkirche, the University, the Art History Museum and the Natural History Museum.
Vienna was protected by fortified walls from the 13th century until 1850, when houses started to pop up outside the walls. In 1857, to create more space for the city, the demolition of the ancient walls began, and in its place the Ringstrasse boulevard was built.
The Fine Art Museum is the largest art museum in Vienna and reported as one of the most museums in the world. It has the following collection of art . Our local guide shared her amazing knowledge of the painting exhibition.
For lunch, some went to the Cafe Museum about a block from the Opera House. We went elsewhere on Kartnerstrasse. I don't remember what.
Dinner that evening was at the SchonBrunn Palace with an early departure at 4:30. Afterward we had a private showing on the Palace.
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Our small group of only thirteen guests walked alone as our guide described forty of popular rooms.
In the morning of our third day, we were again on foot touring around the grounds of the Hofburg, walking to the Jewish Museum, and over St. Stephen Cathedral. At St. Stephen we were lose to our own reconnaissance.
Our first destination was entering the Hofburg complex to the left of the Burggarten.
From there we walked to the Jewish Museum before ending our tour near St Stephen Cathedral.
For lunch what was better than a Vienna sausage shoved into a round hole in a bun. The best location was a rabbit hutch.
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John appeared after we finished our frankfurter in the bun hole. He was still climbing something, anything. This time he convinced Carolyne to the Albertina monument two stories above our Rabbit. Not being satisfied, he convinced us to another art museum - the Monet and Picasso at the Albertina.
The museum had this newfangled thing. We get to carry our personal art guide on our cellphones.The only problem, neither Jim nor I could make that QR thingy code work. Abbie had to scan our cellphones and John had to show us how to find the audio files. |  |
Dinner that evening was "dress-up night." We were at the fancy Café Landtmann before our private Mozart and Strauss recital. At least that evening, we didn't need a QR code.
I saved several snippets for everyone's remembrance.
We brought John Springsteen for his 144th performance
OUR SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
On September 11, 2001, we were in Munich. It was part of our Tauck tour from Cologne Germany to Vienna Austria. I wrote a travel log about our experience. Below are our last couple of days before we were allowed to return to the US. I anticipate Tauck and our new travel friends will be repeating the same schedule.
All aboard! At 9 AM we were standing at the railroad station waiting to board our train for a ride to Vienna. We had seven first-class cabins in car 23. With six people per room, we relaxed, ate our "sack lunch", and exhausted all the champagne in the club car making Formosa. There wasn’t anything of interest to see outside on our three-hour ride. Most of us read while others walked up and down the walkway of the car trying to startup a sing-along. Some of the ladies got a little wound up. A group of eight of them marched through the train station in Vienna singing "God Bless America". They turned a few heads, but not much more.
Bernd had already arrived with our taxi and our local tour guide. As we drove along the Ringstrasse to our hotel, the Bristol, we got a short description of what we were seeing. Shelley handed out maps of the old city, gave us our room assignments, and told the ladies where the shopping district was. Since the stores were not going to be open on the following day, Sunday, Shelley again conspired with the women to get them into town a few hours before they closed.
Our rooms were large and very luxurious and right at the edge of Old Vienna. Across the street and just outside our window was the Opera House. A few blocks from that was the Museum district and in the opposite direction was Karntner Strasse, a pedestrian-only street, where all the stores were. We couldn’t have asked for a better location to stay. If we got stranded in Europe, we would have been delighted to stay here, but at five hundred dollars a night, we doubted if our travel insurance would have covered it.
Again we had no time to spare. We still had to get those last-minute souvenirs for family and friends back home. Karntner Strasse started one block from our hotel and ran three blocks to St. Stephens Cathedral, made a hard left, and looped around for a half dozen more blocks, before turning again back to our hotel.
Being Saturday evening the streets were full of pedestrians and a street performer on every corner, playing violins, singing some operatic melody, miming some statue, or giving a marionette show. Umbrella tents were set up everywhere as makeshift coffee houses or wine gardens. While the ladies frantically ducked into every store trying to find that perfect remembrance, the men sat patiently at a table in the street drinking a glass of beer and admiring the passing scenery. By the way, leather was in!
Dinner that evening was on our own. Whereas the concierge make reservations for everyone at some fancy Vienna restaurant, the Tennessee contingent had about all the super fancy food they could handle. The extra pounds, almost ten for many of us, were becoming apparent. We were looking for "light and simple". In the absence of a "meat and three" or a catfish stand, we settled for pizza at a tiny little restaurant we found tucked into a back road a couple of blocks from St. Stephens.
In the morning our guide met us again and we headed for Schonbrunn Palace. Originally a hunting lodge of Maxmillian II in the 16’th century, it was continuously expanded by the Habsburgs over the next two centuries into an opulent palace in the style of France’s Versailles. French Style gardens were added at the end of the 17’th century and Maria Teresa converted it to a palace at the end of the eighteenth century.
Later that morning we walked through the museum district of Vienna while our guide explained what we were visiting. By this time most of us were "vacationed out". Our interest shifted to the question of whether we were going to get home. Shelley confirmed all planes were flying as originally ticketed. Only one couple had their lights canceled.
In the afternoon we walked down the street to an Internet Café, ordered a couple of glasses of wine, and e-mailed everyone back in the States, "we were coming home.
We had our farewell party in a private dining room in Bristol. During diner, several groups of our new friends got up and entertained the others. We had a rendition of the yodeling cow, followed by the goat act, we had some songs couple of other groups, a Hawaiian farewell song from Shelley, and least important, a performance by Terry and the Eight Fraus of "Was ist dis mein dear". A good thing for Terry and the Fraus, the audience only threw their napkins, they had already removed the utensils.
We got to the airport several hours early anticipating all kinds of delays due to added security measures. We were given a list of all the things that we could no longer have in our carry-on bags. We expected the worst, but our experience was just the opposite. There were no delays and we noticed few added security measures. About the only thing out of the ordinary was the added body scan in the Frankfort airport and increased searches of carry-on bags.
In the Vienna airport, six men of middle-eastern descent boarded our plane. They huddled together in the corner before boarding and were the attention of every other passenger. We had already made our plan if they dared get up while we were in flight – three of us were going to pick up Terry Kelly and throw him at them. Fortunately, for Terry, they slept the entire trip. Aside from that, the flight home was peaceful and without incident.