We headed to the imperial residences of Hofburg Palace (winter home of the Holy Roman Emperor). Further disappointing Valerie, the palace did not resemble a castle. Rather, it was a collection of finely decorated rooms, just like every other palace. One thing I’ve noticed about all these palaces is the lack of hallways. One room just leads into the next room which leads into the next. It seems like it would be annoying to have people constantly walking through the room you are in as they move about the palace, but I guess that is the price of royalty. In contrast, as the show “The West Wing” has taught me, the White House is loaded with hallways. But I digress…

In the evening, we headed to the Naschmarkt to pick up some dinner. Naschmarkt is a dedicated two block area of various food related stores (restaurants, bars, shops). There were a lot delicious looking food options, but since we needed to hop on a night train to Venice in a couple hours, we opted for a couple of take-away sandwiches.

Today, we roughly followed Rick Steves’s advice about what to do on one’s first day in Vienna. We started by heading to the Opera building to catch a Big Red Bus tour around town. Unfortunately, we just missed the bus and the next one wasn’t leaving for an hour, so we visited the nearby Albertina Museum in the meantime. After the museum and the bus tour, we followed Rick Steves’s walking guide to the Kaisergruft and St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Besides being walking tour destinations, these two places have another thing in common: the remains of deceased members of the Habsburg royal family are (supposedly) stored in both locations.

In the evening, we headed over to the opera to get “standing room” tickets to that night’s show (Boris Godunov). After standing for about an hour, Valerie decided she’d had enough culture for the night and we headed back to the hotel.

As this trip has progressed, I’ve developed a calendar system based around the start of our cruise.  Day zero is the start of our cruise (October 15).  Days before departure are known as BC (before cruise).  Days after departure are known as AD (after departure).  For example, October 5 is 10 [days] BC.

For those who are interested, below is a list of the remainder of our planned travels BC:

• 12 BC – 11BC : Vienna
• 10BC – 8BC : Venice
• 8BC – 5BC : Cinque Terre
• 5BC – 3BC : Siena
• 3BC – 0 : Rome

Today’s train ride from Praha Hl. N. to Wien Meidling took about five hours.  It took us another hour or so to navigate Vienna’s maze of trams, U-Bahns, and S-Bahns to get to our hotel.  After we checked in, we took a walk around Vienna, through the gardens at Belvedere Palace and around part of the inner ring to the Opera House.  Along the way, we stopped by a very touristy Austrian restaurant and tried some Austrian “favorites”: haunch of ham and goulash.

(From what I’ve read, Praha Hl. N. station used to be named after Woodrow Wilson.  There are statues of him and plaques with his name all over the place.  After the communists took over, the station was renamed to “main station” or Hl. N.).

I love how relatively inexpensive everything in Prague is compared to the rest of Western and Central Europe. For two nights in a row, we’ve been able to have nice 3-course dinners for two with drinks for under $25 (about the same cost as soup, salad, and breadsticks + a drink at the Olive Garden).

Today, we visited some of the main tourist sights in downtown Prague. We started our day at Old Town Square where we gawked at the famous Astronomical Clock for a while (but always managed to be just out of sight whenever the hour struck). Next, we headed across the Charles Bridge and hiked up the Prague Castle. The castle (despite its name) is not really a castle as much as a collection of buildings within some walls. Valerie has been looking forward to seeing castles all trip and I think she was disappointed by this non-castle castle. Before leaving the castle area, we stopped by the Lobkowicz Museum, which details the long and somewhat tragic history of the House of Lobkowicz. (If you are planning to visit Prague Castle and the Lobkowicz Museum, you can buy a discounted ticket package at the Lobkowicz Museum if you don’t mind going through the castle in the reverse direction as everyone else.)