Saturday In Old Vienna – Gerstner’s, Museum Quarter & Sacher Torte

On our first free weekend in Vienna, some of the students traveled to Budapest, a larger group took an all-day bike ride/wine tasting tour through the Wauchau Valley, some went to Salzberg, some stayed in their dorms and toured locally, and Mark and I booked a room at the Hilton at the Vienna Plaza hoping for A/C, time to visit at the Museum Quarter, and hopefully include another visit to  Old Vienna.

We start with breakfast in the center of Old Vienna at Gerstner’s Konditorei which makes Mark’s favorite apple strudel with vanilla cream sauce!

 

After breakfast, we take the No. 71 to the Museum Quarter.  As we make our way, we see beautiful, opulent matching buildings:  on the right side is the art gallery housed in the Kunst Historisches Museum (“KHM”) and the left side is the building for the Natural History Museum (“NHM”):

In between these two beautiful buildings is the Maria Theresien-Plaz, which has beautiful statues dedicated to Queen Maria Teresa.

The KHM was built by Emperor Franz Josef I to hold the artworks collected by the Habsburgs over the centuries.  We saw paintings by Rubens, Caravaggio, and other artists of the Michelangelo school, mostly covering the 1300’s through 1800’s. 

There are beautiful marble ceilings everywhere in the museum

This is a stone and marble staircase leading to the paintings

Another view of the various colors of marble used throughout the museum

Some of the paintings - they discouraged photography.

Another beautiful marble ceiling!

We take a water break in the museum café - see more marble all around!

The NHM is one of the largest and oldest natural history museums in the world. The building it is in was completed in 1889 and currently houses a collection of about 30 million specimens and artifacts.  The collections were originally founded in 1750 by Emperor Franz I Stephan of Lorraine, Queen Maria Theresa’s husband.  As we strolled through the exhibits and rooms, we noticed there were a lot of children present.

On the right of the entrance this statue of American and Australian natives

The left side of the entrance is dedicated to Europa

As in the KHM, the NHM has a lot of marble on the floors, walls & ceilings.

Stone and marble staircase leading to exhibits.

This summer, the NHM is featuring the American buffalo

We noticed that they have a lot of stuffed animals on display

Soaring eagles above us

 

I think they made up this one!

 

There's an exhibit of early man and evolution. 

This double helix introduces the collection.

Dodo!

The NHM has collections in hallways in addition to its large rooms.

Dinosaurs!

Very popular with kids and their parents.

The smaller dinosaur in left front was animated to

move around and roar every few minutes.

Mark videotaped it for Lincoln.

More specimen display cabinets

This one features DNA discussion.

Meteorites!

After spending hours going through two of the museums, it’s time for a late lunch at the Sacher Hotel Café!

 

Mark's Sacher torte with whipped cream.

 

We spent the rest of this very hot Saturday strolling through Old Vienna and picking up a few things to take back to the States.