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.