Grüβ Gott!, part 4 of 10

Saturday:
Me: Who turned up the gravity?

The artful Roman Ruin (1778)

As we arrive in Vienna about half past six in the morning, the sun is rising.  We deposit our luggage in a locker and maneuver through the commuter rush at a bakery to have breakfast.  Then we set off for Schloβ Schönbrunn.  It lies a good ways away through a commercial district, but we still manage to arrive at this iconic Viennese summer palace before the crowds.  The rooms are gorgeously appointed and still representatively furnished (except the ones being renovated).  We eat an early lunch in the park, whose gravel paths are liberally dotted with joggers on this unseasonably warm autumn weekend, before hiking up the hill behind the most famous of the “beautiful fountains.”   From there we have a magnificent view of the city, which has grown out to meet this one-time hunting lodge.  After some hemming and hawing over the prices, we decide to skip the greenhouses and head to our hotel.   Lying across the bed, I utter the line above.  It isn’t sleepiness as much as a general exhaustive heaviness of the limbs that has settled upon us.  DH naps while I get on the internet and look for a place to eat dinner.  That evening we eat at the Balkan restaurant around the corner before hopping on the U-Bahn to the small Kammeroper, where we watch Josef Haydn’s one-act D’isola disinhabitata.  Programs apparently cost money, and neither of us knows the story, so we just watch and read the supertitles (auf Deutsch).  The company puts a post-modern twist on this love story with stage directions that undercut the hunky-dory ending, and we both enjoy it.

The Glorietta (1775) at the top of the hill

The glorious view in the other direction (2010)