Vienna by tram - the grasshopper has taught us well!

Well, after getting some fairly simple directions from the hotel clerk today, we headed off by Vienna tram to the Hoffburg Palace. This Palace was the main palace of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. We went through the Sisi Museum (Sisi was the nickname for Princess Elizabeth who after marrying Emporer Franz Joseph, became the Empress). The museum houses items from the kitchen, dining area and so on. Sounds like its boring but the amount, type and nature of the items on display was again indicative of the opulence and decadence of the Empire of the 1800s. Place settings numbering in the hundreds, gold place settings, etc. We then were able to tour the different rooms where the royalty lived, especially Sisi. Her story is very much like the Princess Diana story - rather sad in that she gradually shunned the requirements of her office as Empress and began to isolate herself more and more, not only from the people of her Court, but also of her family. She was assassinated in 1898. Having the ear wands to hear the concise and relevant explanations helped considerably and also took away from the seemingly boring nature of the visit we made there. Took about 5 hours, including lunch (wonderful decadent dessert - but lo-cal, I'm sure)!
Rest of the time we spent cooling our feet in Starbucks, then headed off to one of the main shopping streets. Lots to see, some of it similar to Edmonton, Some of it rather unique. We still haven't found anything major/big/expensive to purchase and bring back home.
We will be off for dinner soon, then off to Salzburg some time tomorrow. It's only a 3 hour ride so I'm not sure what time we will leave. After staying overnight in Salzburg, and still having the Castle there to see, we will likely leave for Zurich and then Luzern on Monday, late morning - the train ride is about 8 hours but apparently it is a very spectacular ride once you get into the Swiss Alps so we have decided that we will do it during the daytime rather than as an overnighter.

More later and hopefully more pics. The download process is different here and as well we are paying 5 euros for 15' of computer time, so no time to fool around.

Weather here has taken a turn and temp today was in the low 20s, with some drops of moisture - it did rain more heavily during the night. First time we have headed out for sight-seeing with our jackets.

Ta-ta for now,
Jim and Joan