Vienna is a big city, and our hotel was situated so as to accentuate that fact. Our Garmin took us correctly onto Mariahilfer Strasse, a very busy commercial street, and drove us right by the Pension Corvinus but we still couldn't see it.(See the little blue sign near the center of the picture on the left.) So we decided our best choice was to park and walk around and ask. Yeah, sure. Find a parking place. After a couple of passes we found a garage and, feeling that our previous adventures had prepared us adequately, went in and parked. Of course, we carefully noted our floor number (2A).
Following exit signs (ausgang) led us to a department store. Not to a sidewalk in front of a department store, into it directly from the garage. Making the best of things, we just followed more signs in the store and eventually ended up on Mariahifer Strasse where we wanted to be. We then walked around the corner to see if we could find the auto entrance we had used and we did, so we figured we were well oriented.
We had the street number for the Pension Corvinus and felt we couldn't go wrong; we would walk right to it. We were looking for 57 and we came to a pizza store with 55 on the door, so we thought, aha, our pension is right next door, but it wasn't. We stared at the doors around the 55, but 57 was not to be seen. So Don, wondering if this might finally be the test of his retention from those hours of studying his German phrase book, strolled into the pizza store and boldly said "Sprechen Sie Englisch?". The clerk shrugged so Don tried "Pension Corvinus? Nummer seiben und funfzig?" and the answer was a reassuring nod, saying something in German that Don didn't understand, and pointing up the street. So Don said "Danke schön" and we walked in that direction and sure enough, past a little courtyard with yet another statue of W. A. Mozart was 57 and a Hotel Corvinus sign. (Photo on right.)
It turned that the pension was on the fourth floor - and only the fourth floor - which was one of the reasons it got lost in the clutter. (See again the sign in the photo above, left. It must be meant to show the actual location of the pension) And it also turned out that during hotel registration when we asked about parking we were directed to the very garage we were already in. We figured the reason the no. 57 was so hard to find was that the store fronts did not have their own individual numbers. A number was assigned to a whole building. So there was a courtyard between building no. 55 and building no. 57 and several businesses shared each building. No problem if that's what you're expecting.
So, registration taken care of, we went back to the garage for our luggage. We retraced our steps through the department store and took the stairway to floor 2A. We rounded the corner to our parking slot and - no Opel Astra! In fact, the whole area had a strangely unfamiliar look. We looked at each other in disbelief. We kept looking at the posted level number, sure enough, 2A. We walked around and around. The garage floor area was not that large. It was very farfetched that the car had been stolen. It was one of those movie situations where the witness to the murder brings the police back to the scene of the crime and there is no trace of it. Well, anyhow, after 20 or 30 minutes we finally stumbled on the solution to all this: there were two floors labeled 2A. They are color-coded. One displays its numerals on an orange field and the other on a green field. We are still shaking our heads over this. Parking garages are bane to us.
After returning with our luggage we were in no hurry to leave our air-conditioned room for the steaming streets. And the mini-bar beckoned.
Overall, Vienna was somewhat disappointing as it was built up quite a bit in our Rick Steves guide book. Part of the problem was that it was a little hot (low 80's) to be walking around in the bright sun. For example, one objective was to take a tour of the famous opera house (left). When we went to the entry door where the tour times were posted we could see that a crowd was building for the next tour a half hour later. (Actually, the only English-spoken tour of the day.) All the close shady places were taken already so we went 50 meters or so to an awning at the top of an escaltor used for a subway (U-bahn) exit. Pretty soon that area was jammed and we were shoved closer and closer to the escalator. Finally the opera house door opened but apparently there was no waiting room inside and the crowd just jammed up at the doorway, shoulder-to-shoulder. As we knew there was no air-conditioning inside, this situation was a complete turn-off and we left without competing.
Our opera experience did not stop there though. The evening's performance was of "La Juive", an opera we had never heard of by a composer we had never heard of, but Don was undeterred. This was the Vienna Opera. Still, after the afternoon heat we had no desire to sit through a three-hour opera in an 80 degree auditorium. Luckily, Rick Steves had told us about the cheap standing room seats where one can come and go during the performance and even explore the opera house unescorted. So standing room it was. We went back in the evening and as usual we had to try two or three places before we found the SR ticket window, and this while dodging the costumed ticket hawkers surrounding the opera house like - well, you can think of a metaphor. You have never seen so many Mozarts in your life! The ill-fitting wigs are actually comical. Apart from the humor this does not enhance the Vienna experience. They are aggressive.
Once inside, the standing room was not hard to find. Neither of us had ever seen a standing room before and it was interesting. It was a rather small area, maybe 7 meters square, with horizontal bars at elbow height to lean on and a few chairs in the back for the weary. Even though we were relatively early, it was packed already. And the temperature was even higher than we anticipated. The persperation was flowing freely even before the performance started so we did not even survive the first act. But that was not the end of the entertainent. We strolled around the opera house and even chatted with the idle ushers. It was definitely worthwhile.
We had introduced ourselves to the Vienna U-bahn (subway) the day before and so that's how we got back to the hotel that night. We were surprised at how difficult it was to navigate this system at first. We had had no trouble (well almost none) in London or Paris last year and so didn't expect any problem. But here we couldn't seem to find maps when we needed them and never did figure out the route naming system. At least we didn't take any wrong trains. Just luck, mainly.
Much of one day we spent in the vicinity of the Hofburg Palace, the home of the Hapsburg rulers for 640 years (until 1918). After wandering around the grounds for a while we decided to tour the "Imperial Residence".
This was a museum devoted to the household amenities used by the royal families. About halfway through a self-guided tour we (everyone) were directed to leave the building immediately. We did but never found out the apparent threat: fire?, bomb?, the Ottomans?
Rather than hanging around to get back in (who knows when) we decided to have lunch at an outdoor venue overlooking the Palace garden. Very pleasant.