SS Suzi Q: Day 13 - Dining with the Queen

Vienna, often called the city of music, was more like the city of noise. Like any big city, this one was full of cars, buses, trams, people, and subways. All making noise and not any music. But there are some beautiful buildings in the center of the city where Queen Maria Therese and her family ruled their empire from. She had a large family 16 kids, she had lots of people working with her and she liked pretty things. They told us at the Melk Abbey that when the Queen came to the Abbey she would have 300 people with her.

Queen Marie Therese

One of her palaces is in the middle of the city with a park for her family right next to it, large stables for the Spanish Riding School and it's famous Lipizzan horses, museums and opera house. The center of the city is shaped like a horse shoe because at one point the city center was a fortress to keep the royalty safe from outside groups. Eventually the fortress became to small and the walls came down to expand around 1857. The palace is at the center of the town and the streets kind of look like rays of the sun out from there.

Front of the Imperial Palace

The back of the Imperial Palace

Lots of famous musicians and composers lived and made music in Vienna, this is why it is the city of music. Some of them are Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, and Johan Strauss. Grandpa was able to attend a concert where a small group of musicians, singers and ballet dancers gave a concert of Mozart and Strauss. He really enjoyed it.

After taking a bus tour around the center of the city our guide took us on a walking tour to see some of the more important sites. We visited St. Stephens Cathedral, the stables for the Lipizzan horses, outside of the palace, the opera house and down the roads of a few streets to see buildings that were once very rich peoples houses. Funny enough our tour guide was american, he was born in the midwest and went to Austria for a Study Abroad in college. He met a girl there and they were married. He's been in Vienna for 32 years.

Lipizzan horse stables

One of only 2 horses in the stables, during the summer they are at their summer home enjoying the fresh green grass away from the city.

This monument was built by the King in 1680, a big plague (illness) came to Vienna and was killing alot of people. The King prayed that if God would take the plague away the King would build a monument to God and Jesus Christ to honor them. The plague left killing 1/3 of all the people of Vienna. The King fulfilled his promise.

St. Stephen's Cathedral

Grandpa and I spent the rest of the afternoon looking at rooms and rooms of paintings from lots of famous artists in the Queens own art museum. She had an art museum and a natural history museum built right across the street from her palace, she liked art and her husband liked science. After a few hours I was getting google-eyed from looking at all of the pictures and we found a cafe on the sidewalk with apple strudel. Guess what we had. ;)

The art museum

The stairway in the art museum

Under the rotunda in the art museum

The rotunda in the art museum

Apple Strudel with vanilla creme sauce

Apple strudel

Story of the day is about cake, the Sachertorte. Prince Wenzel von Metternich was having important guests over and asked his chef to come up with a new dessert for the occasion. The chef became ill and so had his 16 yrs old apprentice Franz Sacher come up with the dessert. He created a chocolate cake with an apricot jam between two layers of cake a chocolate frosting on the outside. The guests loved it, but nothing was mentioned about the cake again. Franz finished his training and opened up a store of his own and made his sachertorte. His son, Eduard, went on to be a chef and trained at another shop The Demel Bakery, while there he perfected his father's recipe. He made the cakes at the Demel but eventually left and opened up a hotel, Hotel Sacher. At the hotel they served the cake as well. It became a famous Vienna treat. But when the son died the family lost the hotel and his son, Eduard Jr., went to work for the Demel bakery making the sachertorte. The hotel was bought by someone and they started making the sachertorte and calling it the original recipe. The Demel Bakery was upset because they had the son and the original recipe so they were the original recipe. For 7 years the battle raged in court as to who had the rights to say original recipe. Eventually they decided both could have their way, Hotel Sacher would advertise that it was the original recipe but Demel Bakery could decorate the cake to say it was from Eduard Sacher's original recipe. All that fuss over a chocolate cake.