15 June 2006

Day 19 - Schönbrunn Palace

We visited Schönbrunn Palace today. This palace is in some ways similar to Versailles, which we visited a couple of weeks ago (read our blog entry, if you missed it). It's a large palace (perhaps not quite as big as the Chateau de Versailles) with large manicured gardens.

David in front of the Palace.

Evan in the palace grounds, with the Gloriette on the hill behind him.

We went in to pay our admission fee, and chose to get a 'Classic Pass' which gave us access to the 'Grand Tour' of the palace, the Privy Garden, the Maze and an apple-strudel making demonstration.

Our ticket gave us a time and a gate to see the palace, presumably to stop everyone going in at once (Versailles certainly wasn't this organised!). We had a quick look around the grounds before heading on in when our time came.

The palace was in a very good state compared to Versailles. Most rooms were in well restored and in good condition, and - shock! horror! - actually had furniture and other pieces. The personal rooms of Franz Joseph, in particular, were well displayed.

An interesting feature of the palace is that there are narrow corridors running between rooms. All the fireplaces faced into these corridors so that the servants did not have to go into the rooms and interrupt the imperial family to check on the fires and add wood. It was also nice to see many of the servants uniforms, and the various places where the imperial family ate meals - the tables were all set and decorated.

One of the many rooms on the tour is a memorial room to the son of Napoleon and Maria Louisa. The product of a political marriage, he became a 'political hot potato' (in the words of our audioguide) when Napoleon's empire collapsed. He spent most of his life (he died at 21) virtually imprisioned in this palace. In this room is an interesting painting of the boy, and a small stuffed crested larch - the boy claimed this bird was his only friend he ever had in the palace.

After our tour of the palace we headed up to the Gloriette. In the heat and burning sun it seemed a long way to walk, and a surprisingly steep hill - but we made it! We used our pass to get on top, which has good views of the gardens and surrounding city. We had lunch in the Gloriette itself, which was ok for a place targetted at tourists.

The Gloriette, built during the reign of Maria Theresa.

Back at the foot of the hill, we wandered through the maze, and eventually got out. We also visited the pretty Privy Garden adjacent to the palace.

The palace from the Privy Garden.

By this stage we were getting a little tired and were not really in the mood for the apple strudel show, so we gave it a miss.

We walked over to the Kaiser Pavilion which is a Secessionist-style (Viennese Art Nouveau) train station that was designed for the imperial family while at Schönbrunn. Unfortunately, it was closed today.

The Kaiser Pavilion.

Later that evening we had Japanese at a place called Yugetsu not far from the Opera. There appears to be many Japanese restaurants in Vienna, and this was recommended as the best. We can't comment on that, but it was a pleasant meal.

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