Monday, September 08, 2008

Waltzing around Vienna - 7 September 2008

VotivkircheAlthough we set off to walk the 4 km ring road that surrounds central Vienna we made so many side trips and diversions that our final route was more like a drunken figure 8 than a ring.

RathausStarting at the upstream end where the ring starts by the river we wandered past the Stock Exchange and the University until we got back to the museum quarter. Then we headed back through the Hofburg to find the Judenplatz and ParliamentRachel Whiteread's Holocaust memorial erected in 2000. The Austrians took nearly 50 years to admit their complicity in Hitler's atrocities and thus this memorial is one of the first in Austria. The inside-out library is both simple and striking.

BrugelFrom there we went to the downstream end of the ring and wandered back around to the museum quarter where we visited the Kunsthistorisches Museum to look at the largest collection of Brugel's in the world and one of only two sets of $1,000,00016th C tapestry cartoons in the world; the other is in the V&A in London and, by way of complete contrast, one of 5 Canadian $1,000.000 coins made in 2007 from 100kg of 99.999% pure gold.

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