Vienna Christmas Markets
November 24, 2007

This was the first weekend that the Christmas Markets opened up for business across many cities in Europe, including Vienna. Since Kym, Mark, Wendy, and Steve were driving back to Munich to catch a Sunday morning flight, we decided to all spend the day in Vienna before they headed to their final destination.

We arrived around 10AM, parked the cars, and made our way to Stephansdom cathedral and the center of town which is already decorated for Christmas. It's a spectatcular time of year to visit these cities during this holiday period.
We made the walk from the cathedral down the walking the street to the Ring and the Opera House. We walked around the ring, passed through the Burggarten, past the Hofburg to the Museums quarter where we stopped to look at the first Christmas Market (and got a pretzel and scone). We made our way further down the ring to the Rathaus, where the largest of the Vienna Christmas markets occurs. Here we got bratwursts and also found our Vienna Nutcracker (actually two, as after settling on one we found a MUCH more AUSTRIAN Nutcracker, complete with boiled wool coat and hat). We walked back through the Hofburg gardens, past the Spanish Riding School (where the Lipizzaner Horses train and perform). It was in front of this (in the covered passage) that we past by a street artist performing on an electric violin Sting's "Fields of Gold". It was so enchanting and the acoustics were so wonderful we couldn't help but purchase his CD...here's a link to the Electric Violin version of the song....
We continued back to Stephansdom, ate ice cream at Zanoni's (of course, and despite that it was probably too cold for ice cream), and then headed back to the cars.
We drove over to Schoenbrunn Palace to check out the Christmas Market there. Last year we tried to visit right after Christmas but learned that it had already closed for the season. Just as we were leaving we realized that they were doing the Christmas Lighting Ceremony (as this was the first night of the market), so we enjoyed that for a few minutes as the lights were turned on the large tree in the center of the Palace Plaza.
We said goodbye to Kym, Mark, Steve, and Wendy who were all driving back to Munich, and then we made out way back to Budapest. It was a wonderful day and reminded us of how wonderful this season is. Vienna by itself is my favorite city in Europe and a day like today solidifies this opinion in my mind.