Austria

Salzburg

Posted by Mark Sullivan on September 26, 2022

Posted in: Austria. Leave a Comment

I got a little lost just wandering through the town and climbed up a hill and got this lovely view

Three years ago our friends Mary Beth and Sven took some other mutual friends to Oktoberfest in Munich. Everyone had a blast, and the pictures and stories made us want to go someday ourselves. It helps a lot that Sven is a native Bavarian, and his brother Ralph lives in Munich, so they know how to make arrangements and do it all right.

Oktoberfest was canceled the past two years because of COVID. So earlier this year, when it looked like the festivities were back on, we decided to make the pilgrimage, along with Mary Beth and Sven and a couple other mutual friends. Jim and I decided to turn the adventure into a 2-1/2 week tour of Bavaria.

We caught a flight from New York to Frankfurt, and then a connection to Salzburg, Austria, a good starting point for our journey across Bavaria, since the town where Sven grew up is pretty much a suburb of Salzburg, just over the German border.

Jim had never been to Salzburg, and it had been 38 years for me. I have the fondest memories of hiking here with friends back then and obsessively singing songs from the “Sound of Music,” which was set and filmed in and around this beautiful town.

The town is just as lovely as ever. As an added bonus we got a little sneak preview of Oktoberfest because Salzburg’s own Oktoberfest started the day after we arrived. Based on everything we know, this was a very tame version of the big event in Munich. But it was fun to watch the crowds gather in their lederhosen (the guys) and dirndls (the girls), fill up the tents, and get down to the serious business of drinking beer and celebrating German culture.

We arrived in Salzburg the day their mini-Oktoberfest was starting. We’re going way off-diet in Munich for the big one so we demurred here.

Morning on the street right in front of our hotel

The city is surrounded by hills and mountains, all alive with the sound of music…

This fabulous trail ran for miles along the Salzach River southeast of Salzburg. Jim walked or ran on it every day.

Salzburg and the Salzach River from the castle

Mark at Sotille’s Bar and Café, our favorite pre-dinner stop

Vienna

Posted by Mark Sullivan on September 7, 2018

Posted in: Austria, Europe. 1 comment

The spires of the Rathaus, Vienna’s magnificent city hall

To me, Vienna does two things extremely well: imperial splendor and art.

We made a little four-day stop here only to break up our travel. We wanted to get from Paris to Cyprus but were surprised to find no direct flights. We hate long days of connecting flights, so I researched all of the places you could connect, and we decided Vienna would make a nice stop along the way. We were here two years ago, and it’s a place that could keep you busy for a long time, what with all the art and imperial splendor.

The weather was not super cooperative here, but in Vienna even rainy days are elegant

Two years ago we made a hotel choice that played well to the imperial splendor side: The Hotel Imperial. And we repeated that choice this time, even though it’s not our typical style of hotel. The Imperial is Vienna’s grande dame, loaded up with sweeping marble staircases, ornate ceilings, and crystal chandeliers. And like last time, we cashed in some Starwood certificates to upgrade to a lavish suite. It’s a splurge that makes old-world Vienna really come alive.

On the art side, this city is also just packed with treasures. And they are not just dusty old works from a long time ago (though there are a ton of those). Twenty years ago, the city introduced the Museumsquartier, a collection of renovated baroque buildings plus a couple modern buildings, that house a whole bunch of new museums, covering all aspects of contemporary art. This huge complex of museums complements the city’s massive collections of more traditional art in places like the Kuntshistorisches Museum and the Albertina. All of this kept us incredibly busy.

I have to put in a special plug for the Leopold Museum, one that I had not previously visited. It was built to house the once-private art collection of Rudolf Leopold, an ophthalmologist who began collecting works by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, arguably Austria’s most famous painters, in the late 19th century. He bought Schiele’s paintings on the cheap, and the museum now houses the world’s largest collection of them. We spent hours in this place until we were wiped out.

The staircase leading to our room at the Hotel Imperial. Did I mention that the hotel captured old world Viennese splendor?

Imperial splendor all over this town

Jim managed to squeeze in some reading in a lovely park when the rain let up

One of Gustav Klimt’s beautiful portraits, before his work became much more abstract

Klimt also painted many spectacular landscapes

Some of the many eerie self-portraits by Klimt’s protégé, Egon Schiele, who lived pretty scandalously and died at just 28

My favorite haunting self-portrait of Egon Schiele, in front of a Chinese lantern plant

Another amazing special exhibit in the Leopold museum included Lenin by Andy Warhol

We also greatly enjoyed MUMOK, the museum of modern art, which featured an extensive exhibit of musical video productions that is hard to explain but fascinating. Here a viewer enjoys a video of Yoko Ono sort of screeching for two minutes. That may sound odd, but it was somehow hard to stop watching.

Jim actually made it to the Kuntshistorisches museum, where he enjoyed part of the extensive ancient Egyptian collection, including this amazing hippopotamus from about 2000 BC. (Given all the competing museums I did not even make it to the Kuntshistorisches this time, though in fairness to me, I have been there three times before over the past 34 years.)

This Caravaggio in the Kuntshistorisches caused scandal because of a feature that a painter had never before included in a religious scene. (See the next photo.)

Yes, the peasants have dirty feet

The Imperial Hotel also features a rarity in Europe: a bar that makes great cocktails. And in this setting!

Cheers!

On a slightly more downscale note, these Viennese make some pretty great wieners!

Biking in the Dolomites: Days 2 & 3

Posted by Jim St. George on June 8, 2016

Posted in: Austria, Italy, UNESCO World Heritage Site. Leave a Comment

David, Marc, & Mark on the trail to San Candido

From Cortina d’Ampezzo we biked a little over 23 miles to San Candido, known to the Austrians as Innichen. One of the things we like about Zephyr Adventures is that each day there are options as to how hard you want to ride. There are typically short routes, medium routes, and long routes. In this case there were two options, medium and long, but the difference was primarily elevation, not distance. That is, the long route was only two miles longer than the short route. The long route, though, took you up over a mountain while the short route took you around the mountain.

David, taking a break with me, on the long steep climb on Day 2

And me, very happy to have reached the top of the climb

Lake Misurina, one of the little treats to experience on Day 1’s long route

I chose the long route, since, well, that’s just who I am. And it was definitely challenging; the first five miles or so was just a steady climb, sometimes up a 12 percent incline. That’s intense. But it was also rewarding: there were great views of the mountains and a classic Alpine lake. And of course if you work like hell going up there’s also the thrill of the long descent. Great climb, great trails, nice lunch, then off to the hotel in San Candido.

The next day we biked into Austria. San Candido is only about five miles from the Austrian border and from there we continued another 22 to the city of Lienz before turning around and heading back. The ride there was about as perfect as any bike ride could be: mostly sunny, temperature in the low 60s, following a small river on a fantastically well-kept bike trail surrounded by Alpine mountains and brilliantly green hills. It was heaven, a biker’s fantasy. Of course, if you’re following a river, and going with the current, you’re also going downhill, which is part of what makes it so great.

We got to Lienz, rested for a bit in a cute little park, and then the four of us – me, Mark, Marc, and David – headed back. Apparently that modest slope down to Lienz had changed into a much steeper incline as we headed back. And the weather had turned so now it was overcast and occasionally raining on us. It probably took us 75 percent longer on the return than it did on the outbound and we were beat when we finished the 54-mile ride. But finish it we did and all-in-all it was a great ride. Just tiring.

Tomorrow we head southwest to Brixen, another 50-mile-plus ride if we do the long route, which we probably will. On balance, though, it’s downhill from here, so probably easier than today’s pretty challenging ride.