We started our second day in Vienna at the Belvedere, a large area of formal gardens, a botanic garden and two former palaces that now house art collections. There is certainly enough to do there to fill several hours.
I’m fairly particular about the sort of art I like, most leaves me cold, but I was keen to go into the Upper museum to see the Klimt collection there. This includes the most famous piece of his work – the Kiss. Turns out that there weren’t as many pieces there as I expected but what they had was excellent. He certainly was an accomplished painter and his portraits we so good that they were photo realistic.
The Kiss is a fascinating piece and certainly gathered the biggest crowds who stood a couple of metres away so as to get the best picture of the picture. This left me with a bit of a dilemma as I wanted to go up close and see the paint work itself. In the end I got fed up of waiting and just went up so some Chinese tourist has me in their shot too.
The room immediately next to the one housing the Kiss was empty and contained a facsimile where you could take a selfie, which we did!
Really enjoyed the Klimt @belvederewien this morning. He really was an accomplished painter. His portraits are photo realistic. pic.twitter.com/CzeyVjUpKu
— Neil Thompson (@NeilThompson) June 17, 2017
Lunch was the typically Germanic fare of sausage, mustard and horseradish. It was pretty good and the horseradish had a bit of a kick to it.
After lunch we went into the botanic gardens which were a bit of a relief after the formal space between the two museums. After which we walked back into town. We had intended to get the tram back but it proved to be impossible to find anywhere to sell us a ticket. Turns out that you need to buy a ticket at the underground station. Surely if you’re at the underground buying a ticket you’d just carry on down and get that? Anyway not getting the tram ensured that we easily made our 10,000 steps today.
We also got to see more of these really rather cute pedestrian crossing lights.
