parts…

animal parts, that is.

i got home tonight and cleaned up something that looked like a little red sploch of maybe jam on the floor.

entrails. some kind of bloody entrails.

where’s the rest of the animal?

eaten, i hope.

tomorrow afternoon we’re supposed to have 5-7 inches of snow, lots of wind, it sounds ugly.

i guess running yesterday afternoon in my shorts was just a lovely dream.

hey, i have the rest of those austria photos.

the last time i wrote, we had just spent our last morning marching all around the schonbrunn palace and grounds. a huge amount of walking. we took the subway back into the heart of town to try to go to the opera, which was supposed to be one of the CAN’T BE MISSED sights.

here it is from the outside.

ok, but it was closed.

we really weren’t that sad about it. yeah, i’m sure it was great inside…but we’d seen lots of stuff already.

instead, we went across the street to a little cafe and kevin had some authentic AUSTRIAN COFFEE. i had some austrian ice cream. it was good.

but then, what to do? i wanted to see the american bar, designed by alfred loos. it looked on the map like it was just down the street.

so we started down the street in back of the opera, and it was full of all kinds of interesting shops and it was a pedestrian-only street, crowded with people. The KARNTNER STRASSE, i’ve spent a long time looking it up because i couldn’t remember the name of it. we kept looking for the american bar, but on the way we stopped into a fabulous shop full of jewelry and gifts, very cool stuff, and kevin bought me a beautiful necklace. we kept walking after buying lot of chocolates to take home to people, and eventually found the american bar, kind of hidden from the rest of the stuff on the busy street.

we kept walking, and came to st. stephen’s cathedral. why wasn’t st. stephen’s even on my list of VERY IMPORTANT THINGS TO SEE? we took a weird, octagonal-shaped elevator to the top. there was a guy who operated the elevator, and we were kind of stuffed inside.

st. stephen’s is very very tall. we climbed out and could walk around on a metal-grated walkway, which was just a bit freaky, in my opinion. the drop was very far.

kevin took many pictures. this is the side of the roof.

see what i mean about the drop?

here’s a wider panorama of the roof.

and a view of the city.

he took lots more pictures from way way up there, but you get the idea.

we took the elevator back down, and since now it didn’t have to lug people up, but instead rocketed, we were suddenly stuffed in there EXACTLY LIKE SARDINES. i’m glad i’m not any more claustrophobic than i am.

we left the museum, and there was still time to see something else. the belvedere! the museum with some actual gustav klimt paintings including “the kiss.”

remember all the walking i said we’d done. more and more walking…

we hopped on the subway and i thought we’d be right there at the belvedere when we got off. but no, we had to walk…and walk…and walk some more.

finally, we got there and rushed in, because the museum was going to close in an hour. as we were entering a large tour bus full of senior citizens were marching in. we managed to sprint past them and up to the room containing all the klimts. and there were lots of them, and they were gorgeous. i started videotaping them but of course you aren’t allowed to videotape so i had to turn it off, but i got some good footage before being told to turn it off.

we don’t have photos, but this is the outside of the museum.

outside the museum were all kinds of expensive-looking apartments. here’s a great view of a place with an incredible glass roof. who lives there? why don’t we ever meet people who live in places like that, so we can see them from the inside?

we were going to get back on the subway but i thought that another stop on the map looked quicker than the way we’d come. so we started walking toward a different subway stop…and we walked…and walked…and walked…

finally we found the stop, no closer than the one we had taken to get there, but at least it was a different walk. at this point i distinctly remember being very tired and whiny.

we got on the subway as i continued to study the map…and i realized that we were very close to the nachtsmarket, a place i’d read about that sounded like it shouldn’t be missed. It was a big outdoor market, and i worried when we got off the subway that it wouldn’t be right there and we’d have to walk another million miles after our huge day of walking.

we got off the subway, and there it was. we walked past the row of vendors selling vegetables, fruit, meat, wine, and all kinds of succulent-looking little things like stuffed grape leaves and little pastries. i don’t know why we didn’t buy any of the stuff, except we were just too tired, plus we didn’t have a way to prepare any of it. instead we bought a couple of big bottles of austrian wine.

i knew there were some apartments designed by otto wagner somewhere around, and thought maybe we’d find them, but we weren’t in any mood to walk any farther at all. but we looked up and there were the apartments, right in front of us.

finally, we had seen enough.

we had to hurry back to the hotel, because we were going to meet the couple we’d met on the very first day of our trip. we were supposed to meet them at 7 o’clock at the hotel sacher, home of the famous sacher torte.

you probably don’t remember this couple i wrote about, since that was such a long time ago. on our first morning, in passau, germany, we met this nice american couple who were about to take the same route as us, and we had a really nice talk with them. they were going to start their trip the day after us, and we arranged to meet at the end to talk. we thought about them several times on our trip – they weren’t particularly athletic, hadn’t done any bike riding to prepare for the trip, and we wondered how they’d manage.

so we rushed back to the hotel and then got back on the subway and back to the opera, because the sacher hotel was right across the street from it. and there was the couple waiting for us, don and diane. we didn’t go into the very fancy part of the hotel, but next door at the little cafe. we ate sacher torte, it was a little dry but it didn’t matter, because we had such a nice time talking to don and diane. they’d don pretty well on their trip, except don had fallen at one point because of something that was wrong with his bike, and his lip was cut and he was a little scraped up. but they managed fine, and i was glad that we weren’t traveling with them because they got up very early every morning to start their route.

here we all are.

i think don and diane wanted to keep talking, but i could barely keep my eyes open. i didn’t know at the time why i was so tired, but of course it was because we’d been rushing around all day, plus the day before, and the days before that there was all that bike riding.

we said goodnight and headed back to the hotel.

saturday morning we got up and went to the airport, which was fine, except the airline didn’t have any tickets for us and even though we got to the airport about three hours early, we barely made it onto the plane in time because we had to stand in at least four different lines, for about a half hour each, and every time we’d make it to the front the person would tell us they couldn’t help us.

but we got on the plane, it was all good, no problems.

the end.

except the minute i got home i started trying to figure out where we could take another bike trip.

kevin’s knee is still hurting him, he’s doing physical therapy three times a week, i know he’s going to get all better, because there are many other places to go.

i really have to sleep now.

and wait for the HUGE SNOWSTORM tomorrow.

ok ok ok,

wednesday grace.