We were really tired today, so we slept in later than usual. After a leisurely breakfast we sat down to plan our day. We opted for a fairly low key day as the length and intensity of the trip was catching up with us.
A Visit To Karlskirche (St. Charles Church)
We hopped the tram to Schottentor station and transferred to the U-Bahn to Karlsplatz. There, we visited the Karlskirche (St. Charles Church) for about an hour and a half! The Karlskirche is a Baroque church located on the south side of Karlsplatz. Widely considered the most outstanding baroque church in Vienna, as well as one of the city’s greatest buildings, the church is dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo, one of the great counter-reformers of the sixteenth century. The building was stunning:
As you might be able to tell from the preceding pictures, the Karlskirche was in the middle of a fairly large scale restoration; workers were restoring the beautiful frescoes on the ceiling:
If you were brave of heart and sturdy of legs, you could take a temporary elevator, then some stairs, waaaaay up to the ceiling where the fresco restoration could be viewed up close. Vince stayed on terra firma but I took the scary elevator up to the renovation platform. Can’t say I’d do that again as it was unnerving; the whole platform swayed slightly underfoot, not feeling solid at all. I was glad to get back to the ground floor:
After having our eyes and senses flooded with lovely Baroque imagery, we left Karlkirche. It was about lunch time so we found a nice restaurant in the Ressel Park called (strangely enough) the Café-Restaurant Resselpark. Vince had beef goulash with potato and I had bratwurst with sauerkraut (lots of horseradish!) and shaved potatoes: truly delicious!
If you'd like to read my TripAdvisor review of our meal, click here.
… And On To The Naschmarkt
Leaving the Café-Restaurant Resselpark we aimed to find and check out the Naschmarkt. We had a lot of trouble finding it due to lousy maps, so we wound all over the place but finally came upon it. The Naschmarkt is Vienna’s most popular market; it’s massive – about 1.5 kilometres long. In the Naschmarkt you can buy fresh fruit and vegetables from around the world, exotic herbs, cheese, baked goods such as bread, kaiser rolls, torte, meats, and seafood. There are also many small restaurants which offer food such as sushi, kebab, seafood, traditional Viennese food such as Kaiserschmarrn or Palatschinken (rolled up crepes). There were also many stalls offering clothes and accessories:
We thoroughly went through the Naschmarkt, eventually stopping in at a little pastry cafe called Oberlaa. There I had a Schoko-Mousse Torte (of course), which was probably the best pastry I had during the whole trip. Vince had nothing but used the WC!
After our regrouping we left the Naschmarkt and wound our way through the gay village to see what Viennese gay life was like. The Vienna gaybourhood seems to be very decentralized but in our wanderings we found a few gay places, including Hard On, the Romer Bathhouse and Man For Man …I’m not making these names up in case you’re wondering.
Leaving the ‘hood we found (and used) a Pissoir and public WC (interesting experience), then went north to check out the Maria Hilferstrasse pedestrian shopping mall. Interesting:
We wandered the pedestrian mall, stopping at Hussels chocolate store where we bought a lot of chocolate for colleagues and friends back home (and for us!). We then went a couple of doors down to the Hofer grocery store where we bought bread and a lasagne for tonight’s meal. The Zieglerstrasse U-Bahn (U3) was right there so we caught it back to Ottakring, and then the S45 S-Bahn back to Hernals.
By this time it was only about 4:00PM, but we chose to have an early day. We rested a while, uploaded and reviewed the daily pictures, then cooked our lasagne at about 6:00PM. After dinner I caught up on this journal. It was a quiet night for us as we’re both quite fatigued. We discussed our plans for our last day in Vienna (tomorrow) and went to bed early, about 10:15PM.
One more day in Wein!
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