After our hotel breakfast we decided to go in the direction of the museums. There is so much to see one could spend days wandering. I had no idea what to expect in Vienna although someone (hi Pam!) had warned me that our time would be too short!

Then we headed to the Kunsthistorisches Museum which was simply amazing. I’m so glad Greg said to go. It was incredible … and now my eyes are weary from all that looking.

But … no photos, I’m sorry to say. As it turns out, images I’ve been uploading have been huge files. Since I’d never done blogging like I’m doing now (on my other sites I import small files from Lightroom) I didn’t realize these would be so huge. Argh! Dan is helping me fix this by showing me how to make each image smaller, but so far that isn’t helping with space, so either it takes WordPress time to update or making images smaller after posting doesn’t fix things.

After getting moved into our hotel we went out for a bit of a walk to find dinner. There is so very much to see, and I’m sure we’ll barely touch on Vienna on this short trip. We quickly happened on this place … and this is the opera we do to start the season. Fun!

We hadn’t realized there would be so many people, and really had no clue what to expect in this city. The next few days should be quite fun and, I’m guessing, amazing. SO much history … SO much about music!

It seemed right and proper to end with a little dessert!

And now the do not disturb sign is up … goodnight.

We had a nice relaxing train ride … here are some through-a-dirty-window-while-on-a-fast-train shots:

… and now Vienna!

We thought we’d try the U Bahn, but the line for tickets was rather long so we opted for a taxi ride instead. It wasn’t cheap, but the taxi driver pointed out a zillion things, so it really was well worth it.

We are now at the Amadeus hotel … and it’s older but clean and will do just fine.

PLUS crazy red carpet:

AND Mozartkugeln.

After breakfast it was time to say goodbye to Bayreuth. (This isn’t our hotel … just a shot out the car window.)

Greg and Jan drove us to the Nürnberg train station (thanks so much!), and we spent a short time in the lounge. (I think the photos might be loading out of order. Train Wi-Fi is quite pesky so I won’t try to correct this if it happens.)

Then we headed out to wait for the train. I think I should have brought a warmer top, but oh well!

We are now on this train:

See you in about four hours, Vienna!

I hope to write more about the operas later, but we saw (and heard more than saw) Tristan und Isolde tonight … our final opera in Bayreuth. It’s after midnight and I really must get some sleep, so photos below … and goodnight! (The first photo is from the wall in our hotel room.)

Side note: You can see that the Bayreuth Festival does acknowledge the sad past.

… and others.

Oops! I posted on my oboe site rather than this site earlier today. I’m glad I figured that out ( finally). At this point the post has to be altered a bit, as we are now in Bayreuth. (Initially it was only about my morning walk in Heidelberg.)

This morning began with me taking a walk while Dan did laundry. (I’m having pain issues if I sit too long, and if I go out the pain subsides after about 15 minutes.) Here are shots from the morning:

When I returned I watched a bit more of Tristan und Isolde in preparation for tomorrow, and then Dan and I picked up sandwiches for the road. Jan and Greg soon arrived and we said goodbye to Heidelberg and headed to Bayreuth. After 3+ hours we landed at the Hotel Rheingold. Then we went to dinner. Below are shots from our walk. I’m sorry to say there are no photos of our great dinner at a Greek restaurant.

For the record, Greg is driving. He is NOT drinking a beer. But is IS legal to drink as a passenger. It feels so very odd!

The other visits to Heidelberg included a trek up Philosophenweg and this stay is no different. It’s a climb — quite a beautiful one — and we headed up the street after dinner tonight.

From there we headed over the bridge to Altstadt again. Our last time on this trip, I’m assuming.

This last shot is merely because I find it interesting that they changed a letter of this store name. I’ve read it’s so it’s not confused with the British store T J Hughes. Um. Okay.

And now goodnight!

We took a quick look at the wonderful farmers’ market, had a quick breakfast and then bought sandwiches for a stay-at-home afternoon: we both need to watch Tristan and Isolde so we know what’s going on when we attend the opera in a few days.

But of course I snapped some iPhone shots on our little jaunt.