Monday, December 19 - Day 8, I think?

 Oh, Vienna!  

I won't bore you with our morning routine of me jumping down to the lounge for coffee, then waking up Bill, getting breakfast, getting all of our outdoor frigid weather gear on, and then heading to the tour area.  What I WILL bore you with is a small observation. (Maybe this was the interlude that I forgot?)

As we've gone through the last few days (admittedly, we (I) have done two whole days worth of tours, but it's a relevant observation), Bill and I have noticed that the tours are a bit underwhelming.  Today in Vienna has the potential to be a long day, as there is an city tour in the morning, a Christmas Market tour in the afternoon, and another Christmas Market tour in the evening.  Bill wanted to spend some more time exploring the city, so we ultimately decided to "self-guide" our way through Vienna.  

That is one of the bigger perks of this River Cruising Concept. They get us to the town, and then you can either elect to go with them, or do your own thing.  Our own thing it is!

From our boat, we had a view of a really neat cathedral.  Which one is it, you ask? The one pictured above! We're self guiding, so while I will admit our tour guide knows a lot of stuff, he isn't all knowing and I have no clue what cathedral that is.  I fell in love with its blend of gothic peaks and medieval towers, but...the name eludes me.

In researching what to do in Vienna, and where the markets were, I knew that there were several places to check out.  The first such place was Stephensdom, or St. Stephen's Cathedral.  Reading about it, it looks awesome, but not only that, I found there was a catacombs tour that ran every hour, and it was relatively inexpensive.  Mom was saving her back for this evening's Rathaus Market, which is purported to be the most photographed and filmed market in Europe, so Bill and I grabbed an uber, and off we went.  

Inserting a bit of levity here, we hired an UberX, which is just the basic Uber.  The first two drivers accepted the ride, and then immediately rejected the ride.  So, when our third driver finally accepted, and was on his way, I was excited to be almost on the way.  As I stood outside waiting for the uber, it was brutally apparent that today was/is going to be much much colder than yesterday.  The WIND in Vienna had to be dropping the "feels like" temperature by about 48*, making it well below zero, in any measurement. 

Back to the uber - the uber finally gets here, and Bill and I pile into the back.  As we pull away from the boat, we are both struck by the smell.  Many of you have reading this have kids, so I hope you'll understand my reference here.  Smell, if you will, a poopy diaper, with a wet baby wipe, that's been sitting in the trash can for a day, that has been freshly agitated by the dog knocking over the garbage.  This approaches the smell.  A soiled, day old baby wipe.  I could not get past this smell.  

The next observation about our Uber is that it is definitely not an American uber.  No, American ubers are pretty quiet, unless you're engaged in a conversation with the driver.  Vienna uber's are a string of mutterings from the driver, as apparently they're engaged in a conversation on their phone.  In a totally different language.  Yikes!

Anyway - fast forward past the soiled baby wipe.

We arrive at Stephensdom in short order (although not short enough to get rid of the smell!), and Bill, having no idea where we were going, exclaimed at how cool the building is.  Honestly, this is a point in the cruise where I'm annoyed that I don't have a better camera and photography skills.  This church is amazing, and I could stand here and take pictures all day long.  

I won't bore you with lots of history, but this church has been around for a while.  They've built it up and down several times.  At one point, they ran out of money to build a matching "tower" on one side, so they just capped it off with a dome.  Didn't bother me, as it all looked awesome.

Now, I mentioned that I could stand here and photograph this thing all day long, but I figured that since there was a tour to be had in the catacombs, which would be perfect for Mr. Bill, we went ahead and went inside.  Once inside, it was even more amazing than outside.  

 

 Honestly, when stepping inside, we were blown away with the level of detail that they were able to achieve with stonework.  It was a marvel of skill, and we didn't know where to look.  Wanting to look everywhere, naturally, but what do you actually focus on?  It was about 9:40 AM, and I knew the first tour started at 10:00 AM, so I needed to find out where that was.  As we took some pictures, I started looking around to see if I could find a ticket booth of some kind.

Bill started looking too, and while he didn't find the ticket booth, he did find the Organ.  You'll note that the pipes occupy all three of the top alcoves up there, and the center stack is amazingly large.  Makes me want to sit and listen, assuming they actually still play it!!

Enter my first "almost" thought.  This church is, without doubt, amazing.  However, I noted when looking around that the windows, while cool, are "almost" as cool as the stained glass windows from the church in Budapest. Given all the other stuff though, I really didn't care.  

We did find the catacombs tour, and we queued up for the 10:00 AM start.  At about 10:00 AM, a demur fellow came over and quietly started speaking in German and then followed that up by speaking in English.  There were about 70 people standing around, and it was nearly impossible to hear him.  He led us downstairs into the catacombs, and we were set to begin our tour.