Saturday, 3 September. We had the morning free so, after a continental breakfast at the hotel, we took the streetcar into town to do some shopping with Mrs. Pat Smith (Colonel Shull's secretary), who was also on the tour. We then went back to the Hofburg and watched the final "dress rehearsal" of the Spanish Riding School. It wasn't too interesting, but we still bought tickets to the Sunday performance. We took a short walk toward St. Stephan's Cathedral, picking up a souvenir charm of Vienna on the way. We had genuine Vienna sausages (wieners) at a little out of the way restaurant. (This was the only meal not included in the cost of the tour.)
At 13:00 we met our tour bus back at the Hofburg. It took us to the Schönbrunn Palace, the former imperial summer residence (dating from 1696). We had a one hour tour of the inside, then free time in the gardens (the "Park) and the Carriage Museum. It was really magnificent, both inside and out. I went wild with the camera and almost ran out of film. Here we
spent most of the time with Lt.Col. Howard and May Blum and struck up a lasting friendship.
The tour continued to go badly. The scheduled itinerary was revised, and in the process our drive through the Weiner Wald (Vienna Woods) disappeared. So now we went on the boat cruise of the Danube that had been scheduled for Sunday evening.
We discovered that the Danube itself doesn't even flow through Vienna anymore. It was diverted about 100 years ago as a flood control measure, and only the Danube Canal flows through the city (but in the bed of the original river). The boat went down the canal to the river which, contrary to Spike Jones, is actually blue, but not unusually so. However, since the river flows in a wide, straight, artificial channel, with broad empty meadows on one side for a flood plain, it was not the least bit attractive. Someone spotted a nudist colony along the shore and that was the extent of the scenery.
Jane was feeling quite sick by the time we got under way and rested with her head on Mrs. Smith's lap. Having passed most of the city, we turned into the other end of the canal and returned to the place where we’d boarded.
When we got to the hotel, Jane went right to bed and didn't go out to dinner. I went with the group by streetcar to the "Zehner Marie" (1740), a Heurigen restaurant (a casual vintners' tavern required to serve its own young, homegrown wine) on Ottakringer Road. They only served rotisserie chicken and, with the place packed full of customers, there was a long, long wait for dinner. Fortunately, they had a terrific three man band which specialized in light, if not comic, music. We had some delicious wine and discovered the Viennese all drank wine and not beer. I jokingly mentioned that the music made me want to polka, and Alice rushed up to the band and requested one. The place had no provision for dancing, but Alice and I did a mean polka in the narrow aisle between tables, much to the delight of the Viennese patrons. By the time we finished, things were getting pretty wild, with several Austrian men rushing up to drink wine out of Alice's sweaty shoes.
Our dinner finally came, and the chicken was delicious. After eating, I and a few others went back to the hotel around 23:00. Most of the group stayed a couple more hours. I brought Jane some chicken
and bread which she managed to eat even though she was still pretty sick.
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