Going away before Christmas means double the levels of rush and disorganisation that are already built into this time of year with festive celebrations and family birthdays rolled into one. This is why I'm only now, when I need to be preparing for a busy term, getting around to sifting through the millions of photos I took in late December of beautiful Vienna!
Pre-Christmas Wien was snowless but freezing, with some days of perfect sunshine when its gold shone ...
I could not stop snapping the incredible dome of the Hofburg, Vienna's former Imperial Palace. In its chapel you can hear the Vienna Boys Choir sing mass every Sunday morning.
Exploring the first district or Innere Stadt - Vienna's original walled city, now bounded by the circular Ringstrasse - we walked our feet off (this being the necessary justification for pigging out in Viennese kaffeehäuser, which will need a whole other post) ...
... and how lucky were we to meet up with the best possible guide for our ventures, in the form of blogging friend, the generous and all-round-wunderbare Merisi, whose superb photographs on Vienna for Beginners are a daily fix for all who love this city!
Medieval Blutgasse, around the corner from St Stephans cathedral (left), is where the blood of the Knight Templars is supposed to have run red in a massacre in the 1300s. Mozart lived around the corner in Domgasse.
The sounds of Vienna that I will forever hear in my head whenever I think of it are church bells ...
and the constant clippety-clop of horse-drawn carriages ...
These sounds and sights, and the mix of medieval and grand-scale Austro-Hungarian Empire architecture are what combine to give the eerie sense of being out of time, half-inhabiting a different era ...
Franciscan church, left; Emperor Leopold comes over all humble on the Pestsäule (right), erected after the Great Plague hit Vienna
Facade of the Staatsoper. Its opening premiere in 1869 was Mozart's Don Giovanni, with Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Sissi in attendance.
The Heldenplatz, where Hitler announced the Anschluss of Austria to the German Reich in 1938
But unlike Prague (see here and here), capital of the Holy Roman empire, which felt as though its historic centre was preserved for sightseeing while everyday life happened elsewhere, Vienna's heart was unmistakably inhabited and full of modern life ...
Every shop window, street and facade was prettied up for Christmas ...
Café Mozart on Albertinaplatz, where Graham Greene drank coffee while working on the film script for The Third Man
The grand Hotel Sacher, named for the creator of the original Sacher-Torte, dressed for Christmas, with a line-up of flash cars
... the Christmas lights, from mid-afternoon through the night, were the most gorgeous I've seen in any city
... the Christmas lights, from mid-afternoon through the night, were the most gorgeous I've seen in any city
Illuminations on Graben street, where hundreds of Christmas trees were on sale
I figured this stylish Viennese lady would lead me to all the best shops if I followed her through this elegant arcade of boutiques ...
does she buy monogrammed handkerchiefs here at Zur Schwäbischen Jungfrau, as Empress Maria Teresia did? ...
Even Vienna's dogs and old Franz Josef himself were getting into the holiday spirit ...
where from quaint to kitsch ...
it's a feast of colour, taste and delicious smells ...
Warming up with a mug of glühwein is absolutely the Viennese thing to do while freezing one's buns off at the Christkindlmärkte
the Rathaus, below, is the sparkly setting for one of Vienna's biggest Christmas markets ...
There's more to come, I'm afraid (the coffee! the food! the shopping!), as I appear to have lost all capacity for restraint in my enthusiasm for this fantastic city. For now, auf wiedersehen.
