We woke up to an overwhelming breakfast buffet. Meats, cheeses, fruits, breads, oh my. While munching on some dried fruit and nuts I bit into something very hard. At first dismissing it as something "Viennese" I soon realized it was one of my crowns from my teeth! It had cracked in half and broke off. Fearing pain and beginning to realize how far away we are from our lifelines, I soon realized it was going to be ok. I'll just have a hole in my smile (toward the back, barely noticeable!) for the rest of our vacation.

We also woke up to cloudy skies and cool temperatures. Looks like it is going to be this way for the rest of our vacation.

We walked over to the museum quarter, and went to the Butterfly pavilion. Alex had never been to one and it was very pretty. The day was so cold and dreary and it made it hard to drum up some enthusiasm for all the museums. It was also hard to tell what was open and what was not - I guess usually you can follow crowds or there are doors open, etc. We went into the Austrian historical library which I would have loved to just curl up with a good book in! Soaring ceilings and breathtaking rows of antique books are wonderous.

We then wandered around the Hofburg palace grounds, again beautiful outside and most likely very grand on inside but couldn't figure out what was open to the public and what was not. We went to the Royal Lippanzer stables to try to catch a glimpse of these famous horses. One was in its stall, and as we were shooting pictures the rest of the horses were being brought in from their morning exercise! What beautiful, proud creatures!

Then we walked randomly in the cold drizzle, hoping to come across something that caught our eye: the maps of the city we received are crowded with so much information it is difficult to tell what is what! We saw more cathedrals and then ended up at the Parliament building. This is a massive, massive neo-classical structure overlooking the city. Again, stunning.

We continue our walk and then, lo and behold, another famous café, The Landtmann. Mahler, Freud, etc were all said to have frequented this place. Elegant interior, gracious wait staff. And Apple Strudel with a vanilla cream sauce (served warm) to absolutely die for. Ahhh, much more walking is needed.

We continued our walk to find Beethoven's rooms he had taken in Vienna. The building is in an older section of an otherwise newer block, up on the 4th floor - given that these floors each have 12 foot high ceilings and floor one is not the ground level, we did a climb. This is a very small museum that doesn't have much by way of Beethoven's furnishings, but are the actual rooms where he lived in Vienna for 4 years and off and on afterward. He wrote the 5th Symphony and Fur Elise here. Awesome.

We weren't running into anything that was catching our attention after this so we walked back to the hotel to rest up for the evening performance we had bought tickets for. Honestly, the weather is just not keeping our spirits up!

The performance was by the Wiener Residenzorchester which presented Mozart and Strauss concert at the Palais Auersperg. The orchestra, together with two opera singers and two ballet dancers treated us to a journey through Imperial Vienna.

Afterward, we walked back to the hotel in the cold drizzle. Tomorrow I am buying an umbrella and a hat.