Day 71, Monday, November 4, 2019
I visit the Belvedere Art Museum this morning while Bob goes for walk and explores the area around the museum. The Belvedere, like so many of the museums we have visited was once a palace. This is the grand entrance staircase…
and the beautiful Marble Hall.
I particularly wanted to see Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, but was pleased to find his Judith painting here as well.
The Kiss is one of Klimt’s most well known paintings. It is a large painting, 183 x183 cm.
It is nice to be able to see the painting details up close.
I am also surprised by how many Egon Schiele paintings are on display. It is quite special to be able to see the original paintings of some of my favourite works by these two painters. I didn’t realize that these paintings were so large. Looking at reproductions in books can be deceiving. The Embrace and…. 
the Family are both much bigger than I imagined…
as are these paintings.
Schiele’s Self Portrait is the smallest painting, about 41 x 33 cm.
I didn’t know Jacques-Louis David’s painting of Napoleon was here either. I am so glad I was able to visit this museum. This painting is enormous, 272 × 232 cm!
This painting shows the Vienna Naschmarkt in 1894. It has changed a bit over the years!
We meet up in the gardens outside the Belvedere and then walk towards St. Charles Church. 
There are so many interesting buildings along the way.
We had a huge surprise when we entered St. Charles Church. Two enormous floating mirrored balls that reflected the church…
and us. We are almost in the centre of the reflection but we are very tiny. “Aerocene” is a contemporary art installation by Tomas Saraceno, an Argentinian artist who lives and works in Berlin. The floating reflective balls are 10 and 7 metres in diameter.
Then we notice the scaffolding that goes high up into the dome, and that is where we are going to go! We thought the elevator ride we got a ticket for would be inside a bell tower. Nope! We ride to the top of this scaffolding and then climb a bit further, onto that platform you see leading into one of the round windows in the dome!
Looking down from the top of this ‘elevator’ we notice a workman adjusting lights high up in the dome, yet still far below us!
We have a great view of the dome paintings. It is interesting the way the gold highlights look up this close…
and we have a great view of the other dome paintings. We are crazy high up!
Bob walks back down to this viewing platform so I can get a photo. Notice how he is suspended…nothing below him!
This photo shows the platform that Bob was standing on in the last photo.
We spent quite a lot of time way up there in the dome, and it is getting dark when we get outside. If you look closely you can see some people standing in the round window on the dome. That is the window we were standing in! What an amazing experience. There was restoration work carried out in the dome and the elevator is being kept for a while. The fee to ride up into the dome is a way to make more money for further restorations.
Walking back towards the metro we pass the Opera House…
and take photos of these performers from Tibet. They have a performance later tonight and were taking publicity photos outside the Opera House.
While the men posed, some of the women were busy applying their makeup. 
This is a a huge paper art installation we pass in a walkway near the metro.
A close-up shows lots and lots of writing, musical notations and random marks.
We get home, have dinner, then I head off to a drop-in drawing session with a Meetup group at a pub called Monami.
It was bit hard drawing the model as there were 40 people crammed into a small room. 
I had coloured some of the pages in my sketchbook at home before the session. Interesting to draw on but they don’t photograph very well. 
We were pretty much rubbing elbows as we drew and my views weren’t always great but it was lots of fun.
I finished the session with a 20 minute leg study. I felt quite comfortable going out in the evening by myself. The metro is easy to navigate and there were lots of people about.
The Hundterwasser House attracts a lot of attention. More than 200 trees and shrubs on the balconies and roof terraces make the Hundertwasserhaus a green oasis in the heart of the city.
I wonder what the inside of this tower is?
The Hundertwasserhaus can only be viewed from outside but opposite the Hundertwasserhaus is the Hundertwasser Village, which is open to visitors. It was created out of a tire workshop in 1990-1991. The artist created his own shopping center here with a “village square”, a bar and numerous stores in the typical Hundertwasser style.
Every window in this building is different from every other window! Anyone who lives in the Hundertwasser House also has the right to decorate the façade around the windows entirely to their own taste. 
This fountain is nestled into the undulating ground around the building.
There are is many interesting buildings in Vienna. I don’t know what this building is but it has huge golden globes on the roof.
We walk along this canal and find a bench on its banks for our afternoon tea.
On our walk to the Prater we pass this interesting building mural.
The Prater Amusement Park has been in the same location since 1766! It is free to enter the grounds. 
This is the first ride we see and it looks crazy enough, but…
take a look at how high the swings go! We could not believe what we were seeing! It didn’t even look like this tower should stay upright, it was so tall and narrow. Absolutely insane!!
This roller coaster turned people upside down…
and this ride not only goes upside down, but spins around on the end at the same time! Yikes!!
Then there is this ride…do you see those legs dangling on each end of the long arm that spins around high above the ground?
If you like rollercoasters you might want to try this one,,,it flips you upside down as you ride…
and this swing also turns upside down periodically as it flies through the air. Do you detect a theme here?
The grounds are huge, with an area for children rides that we don’t even get to, and lots of fun houses and scary ghost houses.
I’m not sure who would buy tickets from this fellow!
There is a Ferris wheel, among some of the ‘tamer’ rides…
which I try out!
The diameter of the wheel is almost 61 meters, and the entire iron structure weighs 430 metric tons. 
Its cabins offer a wonderful view of the city and the Prater. 
Here is one of hte cabins going over the top of the wheel.
The wheel turns slowly and our ride consists of one revolution which takes almost fifteen minutes. 
as well as all sorts of candies, dried fruits and some rather exotic looking products in the fish market section.
Near the Naschmarkt we find this interesting tribute to the Orson Wells movie, The Third Man. It is possible to tour the sewers, right under our feet, where part of the movie was filmed, but we pass on that today.
There is a statue of Mozart, right beside a Hop On Hop Off bus station. We sit and have our picnic lunch and watch tourists jump off the bus, snap a photo from quite a distance, and then jump back on the bus to get to the next destination. This sure isn’t the way we do it! We sight-see very slowly and leisurely, stopping often to look at the sights, people watch and just enjoy where we are and what we are seeing. We are very slow tourists!
This equestrian statue of Emperor Joseph II, erected in 1795 is the oldest equestrian statue in Vienna.
We make our way to the Albertina Museum, which we will visit another day. There is a Durer Exhibit I am looking forward to seeing. This is a street view from a corner of the Albertina.
Of course there are several churches on our walk, and we visit all of them!
This broad pedestrian Kärntner Strasse is packed with people and lined with shops and places to eat. This road dates to 97AD when it was a Roman road that went from Vienna to the border of Italy and Slovenia, and eventually all the way to St. Petersberg, Russia!
I thought that the Zen-Doodle like designs on the clothing in this shop were interesting. 
The modern Haas House offers interesting reflections of St. Stephen’s church.
The St. Stephen’s Cathedral is huge, and ornately decorated, outside… 
and inside.
Just behind the cathedral we see a group of people taking part in a drinking game. The guy in the blue jeans drank his big can of beer twice as quickly as the guy dressed in brown!
The Stock im Eisen is part of a tree that has hundreds of iron nails pounded into it and dates from 1440. No one is sure why the nails were pounded in but it is thought that is was for good luck. It is located on the corner of a building and is protected behind plexiglass.
The Holy Trinity Column, located on a street in the inner city of Vienna, was erected after the Great Plague epidemic in 1679. It is one of the most well-known sculptural pieces of art in the city.
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I thought it interesting the way the paintings on the dome extended over the sculptural trim around the round windows.
The end of each pew is beautifully carved with different finials of three children’s heads. We sat for quite a while listening to the choir practicing. 
Back outside, there are interesting details everywhere I look, like these sculptures holding up balconies.
I loved this building. It looks like a castle. I wouldn’t mind living here! 
where the customers are served champagne as they shop! Sigh…an experience I am sure I will never have!
There are Roman ruins… 
and beautiful statues on the corners of buildings. 
This is the building that houses the Austrian National Library, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, as well as the Spanish Riding School with the world famous Lipizzaner stallions. We will visit both of these on another day, 
It gets dark earlier now, at about 5;30. The buildings look pretty all lit up. This is the other side of the Neue Burg Wing of the Hofburg Palace. We saw the backside earlier in the day.
Time to head home. This subway station has colourful murals. Our apartment is very well located on the U6 subway line, so it takes less than a half hour to get home. Somehow even our ‘easy’ days end up being quite long. We left before noon and it will be after 7:00 by the time we get home.
As we get closer to Bratislava the fog lifts, but it is still a very grey day.
This is the border crossing into Slovakia. Because of the European Union there are no border checks or stops, but I do miss getting a stamp in our passports though.
We return the car, and catch a FlixBus back to Vienna. Just as the bus pulls up I realize I have lost a pair of sunglasses somewhere in the airport, but there is no time to go back and look for them. These buildings under construction near the Bratislava bus terminal have scaffolding all the way up to the top! I can’t imagine having to work on scaffolding that high off the ground.
There is lots of construction in Bratislava, which has a population of 425,000. 
We get settled into our apartment and then head out to a life drawing session at 6:30. When we find the Kaffeebar it is in, we find out that the session was cancelled because it is Halloween. Oh well, we got to figure out the way there and I will try again next Thursday. Halloween in Austria is a time when adults get dressed up and party but the children do not go door to door for treats like they do at home.
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