We arrived in Vienna much later than anticipated, close to 5 pm rather than 2 pm. Partly because it seems we spent more time than usual in one of the locks, and partly because the Crystal Mozart is heavy. This appears to be the result of a difference of opinion between the engineers and the designers of the ship, a battle the designers clearly won. The Mozart's beauty and understated elegance are due to a large extent to the abundance of natural stone used throughout, and this makes her, well... a slug.
Our late arrival meant that our scheduled excursion was condensed from the original 3.5 hours to barely an hour. We were rushed to Café Frauenhuber, Vienna's oldest coffee house and Mozart's frequent hangout (in fact, his last performance in 1791 took place there).
There were about 20 of us on the tour. We sat down inside and it was stifling hot so someone suggested we sit outside where it was much nicer. Before we knew it, a waiter came out angrily yelling and waving his arms, telling us we were not allowed to sit there! We shrugged and went back inside and noticed that there were a couple of tables next to open windows so we sat there welcoming the slight breeze. We hadn't even put our things down when the lunatic came back yelling that we could not sit there either (mind you there were no other patrons in the place) so we went to take our "assigned" seats. You should have seen his face, this man was angry and very, very rude, but only a few minutes later he approached our table to take our order and he had magically transformed into Mr. Charm, all smiles and grace. Unreal. We were given a few short minutes to enjoy our Sacher Torte or Strudel and coffee and to top it off, as we were leaving the café a downpour started so we had to run through the streets back to our bus to be driven back to the ship in haste. All in all an unmitigated disaster of a tour which should've been cancelled.
Later that evening we had our Belvedere Palace Special Event. The palace was open only to Crystal Mozart's guests. We were greeted in the Sala Terrena with flutes of champagne or orange juice; we then made our way up the grand staircase to the exhibition rooms housing the work of various prominent Austrian artists, including the famous Klimt "The Kiss" and my personal favourite "Judith". We then entered the Marble Room which had been set up for a concert. A ten piece orchestra, opera singers and ballet dancers gave a lovely performance, which was made even more special when a powerful lightning storm came down providing a very dramatic background to the music. This was indeed a special event which happened to coincide with my birthday. Happy Birthday to me!! Back on the ship close to midnight, a lovely buffet including a delicious goulash soup was waiting for us.
The next day we started out by taking a taxi to a local gym for Blake's workout. The place was hilarious, it had every weight lifting machine known to man but equally important, it had the most impressive collection of pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian Oak, in every imaginable pose. After the workout we decided to ride the public transit system back to the ship. It was painless due to the friendliness of a local couple whom we asked for directions and were kind enough to give us detailed instructions.
We had our last lunch at Blue and I was presented with a small but delicious birthday cake by head waiter Mattias, which he could not deliver the day before since we had skipped dinner because of a late snack.
That afternoon we went on a hiking excursion amongst the vineyards of Vienna. This was a great tour which involved some pretty active hiking up and down the foothills of the Austrian Alps. The views were gorgeous as was the small town of Grinzing where we stopped for an Austrian refreshment of cold snacks and wine.
It was our last night on board and we had yet another amazing dinner followed by a hilariously awful one-man show which we left after just a few minutes. Our bags were waiting to be packed so we called it a night.
On every single cruise there is one thing we hate: disembarkation. It starts with having to leave the luggage outside the cabin before going to bed the night before, followed by a rush to have some breakfast and be off the ship by approximately 9 am. Once off the ship you're on your own man. It's all over, finito. It is generally a brutal and abrupt return to real life.
But on this river cruise? no siree; we only had to make sure we'd vacated our cabin by the most reasonable hour of 10 am, other than that, we were free to stay on board or come and go at our leisure until our included transfer to the airport scheduled for 5:15 pm. So we had a lovely breakfast, left our luggage on board and took off to explore Vienna on our own.
The three of us took a bus from the Millennium Tower station to the city centre where we wandered around the Ring Road and on to Stephansplatz and many other gorgeous sites. After a beer at Café Diglas we set off for Schonbrunn Palace. Hot and tired we made it back to the ship at around 3:30, had a lovely lunch at Blue, sat on deck looking at the swans on the Danube and finally left for the airport. All is well that ends well and this was a marvelous way to end our first river cruise.
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