Fri, Sept 16—Vienna: Prater and Opera
I stayed up till 1 am last night writing on the blog, so we slept in this morning, had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, then caught the Metro to the Prater Park. This is a huge 3,000 acre heavily forested park, which, like the wonderful park in Warsaw, used to be the hunting grounds for Emperor Franz Joseph. Fortunately, it has been preserved and current residents find all sorts of activities there. The place is filled with walking paths and a large paved 2 ½ mile car-free street for walking, bicycling, riding scooters, in-line skates and even segways. The park has gardens and meadows, duck ponds, hills, and forest walks. There are clay tennis courts, a swimming pool, riding stables, a nine-hole golf course, snack shops, restaurants, and beer gardens. Fields are filled with soccer players, yoga classes, and picnickers. There is no entrance fee!
At one end of this park is a year-round amusement park with rides of all kinds for little kids and adults. The most prominent feature and one of the highlights is a huge ferris wheel, made world-famous by the movie, “The Third Man”. Instead of seats like a normal ferris wheel, this one has small cabins, which look like small railroad cars. Each car holds several people and you can ride standing up, or there is a bench seating area in the middle of the car. Some cars have a formal dining table and it is possible to have dinner catered and served to you while you ride the ferris wheel. This was our first stop in the park. As we entered the ferris wheel area, there were several display cases which contained miniature scenes with moving figures. It gave history of the area around the park, beginning with the battle of 1623, where soldiers advanced to attack the Turks. Each of these panoramas was unique and complete in detail and we took some time to enjoy them. One showed men building St Stephen’s church and the action figures were sawing lumber, shaping blocks for the masons to lay in place, climbing scaffolding, moving rocks, and performing other construction actions. Impressive display. We moved on to a point where they took our photo with no option to buy, but we liked one pose and did make a purchase. We got in line to board, took lots of photos, then got in the car with others to enjoy the ride. The wheel starts and stops very smoothly and moves slowly, so it did not feel scary, except that we were climbing very high and the changing panorama of the city skyline reminded us of that.
We walked among the other rides and concessions, stopped for a drink and pop corn and decided to try another ride—I debated because it does turn in a circle and I have this problem with motion sickness, but we got on. The seats have two persons sitting together and this two-seat combination is suspended from long chains much like a tree swing might be. There are a dozen of such swings and all are suspended around the edge of a large round platform. This platform slowly rises in the air along a very tall (117 meters) tower. And while it is going up and coming back down, the swings are turning around as the platform rotates around the tower. The wind through my hair felt good, but I was not able to watch the spinning landscape, so had to close my eyes. I did fairly well until we were nearly back down, when they increased the speed of the spinning platform. I was sure ready to get off, and it took quite a while for the gyros in my head to stop spinning.
We walked along the midway and found a concession that rents bicycles. We rode bikes for two hours all through the park. It was cool and serene, relaxing and a great change from the history tours we have been doing and fun to people-watch while we rode. We found the Vienna Golf Course across the street from the park and rode over to look at it and take photos. When we returned the bikes, we decided to eat dinner early at the park, then go back to the hotel to change for the opera. We ate schnitzel and french-fries at a very Viennese beer-garden type restaurant.
Back in our room, we dressed for the opera and David suggested we take a taxi. Our driver is from the Phillipines and we had a conversation with him about politics. We arrived at the opera in plenty of time to look at the glittery rooms of this lovely theater. Called the Vienna Staatsoper, it is truly a world-class theatrical venue, beautifully decorated and with a gigantic round crystal chandelier. The seats have a small screen built into the rail in front of them which is the place you can watch the English language translations of the lyrics. We wanted our picture taken, and through sign language, David offered to trade picture-taking with an Asian couple. They were as pleased as we were to get a photo as a couple at the famous Vienna Opera. We saw Barber of Seville and it was also world class. We think it is the best opera performance we have ever seen. Terrific voices, orchestra, costumes and a great set. Lots of laughs and sight gags to add to the enjoyment. A magnificent performance!
We rode the metro home. Tomorrow is our 23rd anniversary and we will spend it travelling on the train to Prague.
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