Amazing museum buildings!

Thursday, 7 March, 2013

Guten Abend!

Miriahilfe Str - Near the apartment

Hundezone?  At the museums?

When last I blogged, I was falling over from fatigue, and poor Robert didn’t even get a proper dinner!  We definitely plan on taking care of that tonight!  I think I am dealing either with a cold or sinus infection or a reaction to the hives, because I am still tired and creaky (even after 9 hours of sleep last night), which is not the usual “me!”  (We de dre taking  am still tired and creaky, which is not thecare of that tonight!  I think I am dealing either with a cold or sinuso travel with antibiotics, but I’d rather not take them if I don’t have to!)  

So…up this morning about 7 and believe it or not, all the clothes are dry, with the exception of Robert’s sweater!  Ah, who needs a dryer when you have warm radiators?  I still want to do some ironing, as his long-sleeve shirts are in need of touching up.  We went out around 8 to find some breakfast.  Walked for a few blocks, and found a small café where I had hot chocolate and a great chocolate bundt cake, and Robert had coffee and croissant.  As the museum wasn’t going to open until 10, we headed back to the apartment for a bit.  Out again about 9:30 and caught the #49 tram right down to the Museum Quartier.

Ephesus Museum

Medusa (from Ephesus)

I need to say here that we have had a very interesting/difficult time with the Vienna museums!  There are a lot of them, all spread around – but as you look them up on Google, you can’t get specific information about where anything is!  Very frustrating!  So, we decided to start with the one museum we could locate – the Ephesus Museum, in the Neue Bauer palace.  Really lovely collection, very well displayed, and we basically had the place to ourselves.  It seems that from what we can gather Austrian archeologists only went to two places – Giza in Egypt, and Ephesus in Turkey.  Signage is very mixed – mostly only in German, but occasionally a caption or two in English, but we had great audioguides that were very helpful.  

Ephesus Museum

Reconstruction of a bronze sculpture

Gaming board found at Ephesus

Finished the Ephesus Museum and decided to head to the Art History Museum across the street, as we believe that it contains the Egyptian and Near East collections.  Absolutely stunning building – R keeps insisting that these places must have started life as palaces, but I’m not so sure.  At any rate, the ceilings are stunning, and the decoration incredible.  As it was just about lunch time, we decided to have a sit down and lunch at the museum’s café.  Wow!  

Frieze from Ephesus

Roman sculpture

Museum of Fine Arts

Museum of Fine Arts

Museum of Fine Arts

Robert decided on a caprese salad with pesto, and I had their cream of garlic soup with brown bread crotons.  Robert said that his salad was great, and I can assure you that my soup was like eating liquid garlic – one of my very favorite things! And, sitting in front of the pastry cabinet, we had some very hard decisions to make.  Robert opted for the apple strudel, which he said was great.  I finally selected the Sacher Torte (after all, it was invented here, I believe!) which was wonderful.  Robert washed his meal down with a glass of cabernet, and I had a go at something called “soda-himbeer” – soda water with just a trace of raspberry syrup – it looked good, and by the time I finished it, also tasted good!

Then back to sights!  The museum has an interesting Egyptian collection, but not much at all of the Near East – and to be honest, everything was fairly “higgily-piggily” in its arrangement.  There were prehistoric pieces from southern Austria mixed with similar pieces from Egypt; rather confusing to say the least.  Again, we had very good audioguides, which helped a bit.

Museum of Fine Arts

Museum of Fine Arts

Lunch at the Museum of Fine Arts

Garlic soup

Salad Caprese

Sacher Torte

Apfelstrudel

Having finished the parts of the museum that we wanted to see (sorry, folks, I know there is quite a collection of “flat” art in the building, but that really isn’t our thing outside of Italy!) we decided to head back to the flat for afternoon naps.  Outside – I know you’re not going to believe this!! – but I actually had to take my coat OFF as it was WARM outside!  So, we left gloves, hats and scarves in the flat – but now I’m wondering if we might need lighter jackets!  Hmmm…I know, am I ever happy?!  (And of course the answer is YES!)

Had a nice break, and only one problem!  Robert turned off the radiators before we went out this morning – and now we have no heat!  Apparently, the thermostat is in the office in the next apartment over, and it is nice and warm in there, so our heat won’t turn on!  They have promised to open the windows and see if we can get the heat back; and thanked us for trying to be ecologically minded – but just leave the heat on, once it’s on!  Oh well!  Live and learn!

Heading out for dinner soon!  More later!

m

Museum of Fine Art

Cylinder Seal and impression (8th century BC)

Museum of Fine Art

xxx