Our first stop was Stephansdom (St. Stephan's), which was right next to a U-Bahn station. But the morning service was in progress, and we went to the nearby Peterskirche (St. Peter's) instead. The Baroque church has a beautiful interior.
After lunch (ramen and udon) in the vicinity, we went to the Mozarthaus, which is a stone's throw away from Stephansdom. Here are the kids in front of Mozartshaus. The whole building was turned into a museum to honor the great composer. Mozart's apartment was supposedly an exquisite apartment for his time (450 Gulden per year as rent), but well suited for his statue. For comparison, Mozart was earning 3000-4000 Gulden (Florins) a year, while Haydn was only earning about 1000 Gulden. Mozart was probably a gambling addict, squandered his fortune away, and borrowed money from acquaintances frequently (and owed as much as nearly 10000 Gulden as some point). In fact, no estate tax was levied after his death. Some displays in the museum are original, but most are only replica. There is no surviving furniture from Mozart's estate on display. The audio tour was good and informative. There is even a kids' version for younger visitors. Comparing to the Beethovenhaus in Bonn, which we visited last year, the collection and the displays at Mozarthaus are definitely not as impressive.We returned to Stephansdom afterwards. Its Romanesque and Gothic style building is featured on the Austrian 10-cent Euro coin. Before we could enter the building, we had to battle through a wall of concert-ticket sellers, dressed in historical costumes. These sellers, with a binder in hand, are seen at all tourists attractions around town. Some of them could be quite annoying. After we declined an offer to chat, we heard "Hey, how could you not like music?" It's not that we don't like music (quite to the contrary in fact), but I would rather spend the money on a Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic) performance than a show featuring musicians dressed in historical garbs and Viennese wigs and playing the same music every day. Enough said...
Here are a few pictures of Stephansdom.
After the Dom visit, we walked around the pedestrian area along Kärtner Straße. There are the usual H&M, Starbucks and the high-end designer stores. The kids had a great time looking for "stars". These are similar to those on the Stars' Alley in Hollywood, except that the stars here were all giants in classical music (Pucinni, Vivaldi, Wagner...but we could not find Beethoven, Haydn, nor Mozart). Finally we arrived at the plaza outside the world-renowned Opera House at the end of the pedestrian area. We took a mental note that the Opera House offers a guided tour, although schedule is somewhat irregular. There will be two tours tomorrow: at 13:00 and 14:00 hr. We will be back.
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