Thursday - Vienna tours

This morning I woke up at 0530 and went with Cathi across the street from the Marriott to Stadt Park. We ran laps around the park several times. I took the GPS and went 5 miles running. With short .10m intervals of walking every mile ran. Then I went into the weight room in the Marriott and did:

Tricep Extensions: 4 x 15 @ 30kg
DB Nose Crushers: 4 x 15 @ 12.5kg
Standing Cable Tricep Extensions: 5 x 15 @ 70 lb
Seated Close Grip Cable Pulldowns: 5 x 15 @ 100 lb
Bike: 20 minutes hard
Ab Machine: 4 x 15 @ 50 kg
DB Lateral Raises: 4 x 15 @ 15 kg
Wide Grip Pulldowns: 4 x 15 @ 50 kg
DB Overhead Press: 2 x 15 @ 20 kg

Showered and then had a quick breakfast buffet and met the bus for tour of summer palace of Maria Theresa who was the "Mother in law of all Europe" according to Walter. When he said that Vonda smiled and nodded. Apparently she was "King" of Hungary for a while too. She had children married off to royalty in many other kingdoms. We toured Schönbrunn Palace which was very cool. The gardens were even more impressive to me. Here is some video of the garden with Walter explaining things in the background.

We walked through much of Vienna and saw many places where Mozart performed, lived and died. For lunch we went to a traditional Austrian restaurant. The director of the restaurant looked very local. Good looking guy with a well trimmed mustache and a brown felt-like coat (which is boiled wool and the jacket is a Bavarian Trachten jacket) that had a traditional Austrian look to it. I was thinking that if I could take home one nice souvenir a jacket like that would be it! We walked through many shops later and found that they cost hundreds of EU. Way too much. But here is an ebay link to a store for much cheaper!

Walter took us to all over the place! We went to a unique building which was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The building was designed to be very organic in nature. The roofs were made into gardens. Walter explained that the architect wanted to "rent space to the trees". Some people would ask, how can a tree pay rent? He would answer, the tree pays back in beauty and providing a home to the birds". He wanted the building to be beautiful and not to have any straight lines because the human body doesn't have any straight lines. Here is some video of the building.

We walked past the Vienna city hall. We also walked around a huge Cathedral. Here is some video of Walter explaining details about it.

We ate dinner at another buffet. Lots of meat. Ate no desert.

Swam one mile again and went to bed. We are off to Salzburg tomorrow.