After lunch we walked around the Hofsburg Palace a bit more. Given the palace’s size, you could easily spend a full day touring the various public wings and surrounding area.
We then went to the Wiener Christkindlmarkt, one of the many Christmas markets in Vienna. Like other such markets, it basically houses a seemingly endless array of stalls with people selling Christmas-related goods (ornaments, nutcrackers, music boxes, etc.) and food / drink (gluwein, candy, sausages).
The atmosphere was very festive and people were definitely having a good time (particularly after warming up with some glasses of gluwein).
After the Wiener Chistkindlmarkt, we headed to the Kunsthistorisches museum (houses the Habsburgs art collection, including works by Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, Bosch, and Brueghel) and the Leopold Museum (modern Austrian art, including Klimt and Schiele). The Kunsthistorisches museum was particularly impressive – the architecture and interior design alone were worth the visit.
After the museums we walked through some more Christmas markets (a trend that would continue on Sunday) and then headed back to the hotel via Karntnerstrasse, a street famous for shopping (fortunately, we were only walking through).
We were a bit pressed for time, so we grabbed dinner – some bratwursts – along the way. The tight schedule was due to the fact that we had tickets to see the Barber of Sevilla at the main opera house – the Staatsoper.
The opera itself was very nice, but it was the operahouse that truly stood out. Unfortunately, the early fight (we were up at 5am) finally caught up to us during the second half of the performance and by the nearly 11pm finish we had definitely reached our limit.
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