When we first arrived at the airport and stopped to engage a taxi, we knew we were in Vienna, because they gave us a long lesson on how to properly pronounce Kartnerhof. You see, in Vienna there is a right way to do things and we all do things the right way!

One of our stops the following day was the Hofburg Palace, and to quote our guidebook “..Hofburg (Court Palace) is a real hotchpotch of a place with no natural center, no symmetry, and no obvious main entrance”. At one time the Hapsburgs ruled a vast multi-national dynasty that extended the length and breadth of Europe. This palace now houses the current government, the Spanish Riding School (Spanische Reitschule) and the historic apartments of the Emperor Franz-Josef and various related museums. We visited the apartments of the Emperor and Empress.

The Empress, Elisabeth, met the Emperor when she was 14 years old. He was supposed to marry her older sister, but they met and fell in love. Elisabeth also was one of the first women to actively believe in exercise, and kept a room designated as an exercise room in the apartments and exercised on a daily basis and was also an excellent horsewoman.

Sadly we could only see mock-ups of the jewels she wore, as they real ones were lost when the surviving (to this day) Hapsburgs fled after the assassinations of Franz and later Maria.