When walking into this restaurant, I just felt that the air was thicker with long history...a bit dramatic but, honestly that was what I felt. It was the same feeling I usually have when entering ancient or historical sites. Inside, the restaurant is sectioned into several rooms with named of famous people like Mark Twain. Lucky that we asked our cruise manager to reserve a table for us cuz, with its popularity, we would have problem getting a table for 6 persons. Our room was called Zitherstuberln. Actually it was a part of two connected rooms. Ours was the outer one. These two rooms could seat around 55 people...imagine the capacity of the whole restaurant. The space was pretty tight with old style dark wood furniture...cozy though.
The waiters were very busy and took a bit of times before anyone came to us and the service continued to be slow throughout dinner. There was one thing that I learned about the service in restaurant here which was, don't rush the waiters. I think I read in a guidebook somewhere that they (the waiters) would come at their own time. Anyway, we had better pay attention to the food. We all had appetizer and main course. For myself, I already made up my mind before I came. There are several dishes that I wanted to have in Vienna again. So, I ordered potato soup and prime boiled rump.
I just love this potato soup, it was so tasty unlike potato soup in other places (outside Austrian). It was also very filling. From the picture, it might look like there was just smooth creamy soup but, under that creamy surface, there were vegetables and potato (of course). As for the boiled rump, I had it last two times in Austria. For the first time, I only ordered it out of curiosity and I was totally hooked. I have never seen this dish outside Austrian. I looked as if it would be dried but, it was actually very moist and flavorful. They must have boiled it in stock. It was served with potato, cooked vegetables as well as radish sauce. Ohhh I so want it but, don't think I'm going to visit Austria again anytime soon which made it even tastier. That wasn't all we had. We also had goulash soup, beef tar tar and goulash stew. The flavors were so good...of course, otherwise this place wouldn't last this long.
We didn't have time for desert since it was getting late when we got our main courses. The bill took awhile to arrive too. Lucky for us, my Dad could speak German and so was able to connect with the staff. When we left, there was still jsut enough time to take some pictures and walked back to our pick up spot.
The next morning, we decided to take a regular tour of Vienna. I have been there but, some of my family haven't. The tour started at 9AM with a ride from the dock to the city center. But before dropping us off, the bus went for a circle of the Ringstrasse which is the street that circle the Innere Stadt or the inner city. So that we would get to see overall Vienna's architecture. Then, we got off the bus basically right next to St. Stephan's Cathedral. We were given time to go to restroom (if needed) or we could step into St. Stephen's Cathedral. Well, I chose the latter. It was too bad that the exterior of the cathedral was under renovation or should I say a face-lift. However, city were thoughtful enough to cover the outside with a picture screen of the cathedral so that other people would get some idea of how the place look like.
St. Stephan's Cathedral or Stephansdom was built in 1144 - 1147 with a mix between Romanesque and Gothic style. Did you know that this is one of the tallest church in the world? Well, I didn't. It was also mentioned in the guidebook that this cathedral has hold many events like Mozart's wedding as well as his funeral...wow! I had to say WOW again when we got inside. I have been there but, the very high ceiling, the design/ architecture, the dull color and basically the atmosphere still made me gape. It was a little crowded in there but of course most of the crowd were tourists. There was a light board on the left side of the pew which showed the lay out as well as important points.
Walking around, the atmosphere inside was a bit cool, damp and gloomy. Kind of wonder what it was like in the past...was the color of the pillars and ceiling this dark and dull?
We didn't have much time to admire because we had to meet up with the gang for our tour. After a bit of time to gather everyone, our group finally started moving. From in front of Stephansdom, we walked to the left (with our back toward the cathedral), then took right down Graben street. The name "Graben" actually means "trench" in German. This couldn't be any further from its present stage. Apparently, this part of city used to be a trench in front of a city wall. However, in the 12th Century, the city was enlarged and so this trench got filled up and became a residential area. This "trench" is now a very elegant shopping street.
Half way on the street, we could see a big mound of statue. Sorry for rather underated description but, that was exactly what I thought at first sight. The Pestsaule was constructed as a mercy column after a plague epidemic in 1679. Walking a bit further, we could see Peterskirche or St. Peter's Church. This Baroque church was built, or actually, re-built in 1701 and was modelled after St. Peter Basilica in the Vatican. Luckily, I went inside last time cuz, the tour didn't allow time for us to take a look inside. And what's with me and old church on this trip, it appeared that almost every church I went, was under renovation. St. Peter's also!!
At the end of Graben street was the junction between Kohlmarkt and Tuchlauben. We took to the left and on to Kohlmarkt street. We were heading in the direction of Hofburg as I recalled but, we didn't really get there. Along the way, we spotted a very famouse pastry shop, "Demel". We were very happy to see this shop. I had pastry at Damel twice when I was in Salzburg and I totally love it. It could be that their pastries were really good or it was the environment, I don't really care. I just knew that I wanted to have some sweets there again. However, as much as I wanted to, we couldn't go there just yet because we haven't finish the tour. So, we just marked it in our mind that we would come back. At the end of Kohlmarkt was Michealerplatz and right in front of us was the entrance to Hofburg which is Vienna's imperial palace.
The guide took sometimes to explain the significance of this place but, honestly, we were kind of busy taking pictures. I have to admit that because I was here already, I only slightly paid attention to what the guide said...just wanted to soak in the scene. Then, we went to the left...ohhh bye bye Hofburg.
We walked under a part of Spanish Riding school and saw its horses stable. Those beautiful white horse really looked like they had a royal blood. Their postures looked regal as if they knew that they were handsome and special. Moving on and we found Josefsplatz on the right. Well, we gotto stop again for photo opportunity.
Josefsplatz is surrounded on three sides by a building complex which used to be a part of Hofburg. Now they are library, museum and Spanish Riding school. In the center of the square is a statue of Joseph II who was a Holy Roman Emperor and the ruler of Habsburg land in 17th century, ...sounds very powerful. We moved on to Albertinaplatz and that was where our tour ended.
After the tour, our first priority was to go back to Demel. Not that we were hungry, it was still early for lunch but, we just wanted to satisfy our craving for yummy Austrian pastry. And so we retraced our steps back, first to Michaelerplatz for a little more pictures. Then, we took Mohlmarkt back to our destination.
When we entered Demel, the first thing that caught my eyes was so many kind of pastriessss and they all looked so inviting! It was such a tough choice to make, should I have fruit tart, chocolate cake, mille feuille...etc??? (http://www.demel.at/index_flash.htm) Finally, I settled with a kind of mille feuille with lots of vanilla cream filling, just because I love crispy pastry. We chose to sit at the counter because the salon at the back was a smoking area. The rest of the non-smoking was on the 2nd floor.
My pastry was truly wonderful. The pastry was light and crisp. The vanilla cream, though A LOT, wasn't very sweet. I also ordered hot chocolate to accompanied my already rich dessert. The pastry was great but I think the chocolate cake was so so. It was too rich and heavy than I would like.
I have been to this place before. It was fully stocked with cooking ingredients from all over the world. When I entered that place, I just felt like a kid in candy store. There were so many kind of ingredients that would like to have at home. They separated ingredients into sections and on the shelves the products were labeled with flags of the countries originated which was quite convenient to identified. Well, I went around and just couldn't decided what to get. There were so many things that I wanted but, we were early in our journey not to mention that we still have another half day to walk till we returned to our ship. So, we couldn't buy too many things which was a pity. Also, on its first floor, right at the front of the store, there was a small cafe and it supposed to offer great coffee. Well, we didn't have it. 
After spending considerable time in the gourmet heaven, we walked along Graben street and checked out different shops. We also went around streets that leaded from St. Stephan. Actually, we were buying time till our meeting time for highly anticipated lunch. We finally met up in front of St. Stephan at around 1PM. We didn't have to decided what for lunch, decision has already been made, we were going to have Schnitzel!! This dish basically represents Austria for me. Fried food is already one of my favorite so naturally, fried meat with bread crumbs, crispy on the outside and soft moist on the inside sounds wonderful for me. And we knew exactly where we were going for this traditional dish. Our destination was Figlmuller. This restaurant was quite old, it opened since 1905. I had my schnitzal there the last time I was in Vienna and I totally love it. I found it in the guidebook and lucky enough that it was very close by. It was not very complicate to walk from St. Stephan either.
We basically walked around the back of St. Stephan which was a good thing cuz, there were some relief carving onthe wall of cathedral which we might not get to see.
Actually, the restaurant itself was not on Wollzeile street, only the entryway. Walking inside, we found display window on both sides showing merchandises probably from shops around the area. Half way down that alley and we found our restaurant. The owner probably really liked green as everything was green, green sign, green menu and green restaurant. It was good that the inside wasn't green.
Because the pork was thin, it might not look much but it was very filling and when I finally surrender my knife and fork, I was totally stuff and happy. Imagine folding and folding and folding this piece of schnitzel, we would get a big block of pork. I was so in need of a walk.
To be continue...
