Lovely Day in Vienna

An early morning train ride led to Vienna today.

Every three months I have to come here to pick up a prescription (it's not allowed anymore to send them across the border into another country), so today I brought Claire with me to do that, but really to enjoy the day with her.

She hasn't had any vacation after a full season of ministry, so I wanted to treat her to a fun day off.

After searching for just the right place to begin our morning with breakfast, we ended up here at a cafe/restaurant called "Ulrich".

It's under the green awning!

Breakfast, coffee, sweet conversation and two and a half hours later, I thought to take a picture of this darling little cafe where we enjoyed a wonderful time together. We will definitely go back!

Full in every way after such a delightful time there, we set off for some exploring of Vienna for the rest of the day.

It turned out to be the perfect "Indian Summer" kind of day . . . warm because the sun was out, but also crisp because fall is here.

We walked in places that we haven't before, sometimes watching a map, but sometimes not! You often discover the best things when you don't exactly know where you are!

Walking by the building above, I didn't notice until we were almost passed it that this is the stables of the Lipizzan horses, a breed closely associated with the Spanish Riding school here in Vienna. I visited here thirty years ago with Dave and have never been back! They do magnificent shows (though we didn't go today), but here you can just walk by and see them in their everyday habitat. So fun!

We continued our walk, past the backside of St Stephen's cathedral....

....and on to "Stadt Park", one of the city parks in the heart of Vienna.

It felt very local, with many people sitting on benches reading, talking, or just sitting in the warm afternoon sunshine.

Flowers are still blooming so I couldn't resist a photo by the red ones, with red being one of my favorite colors!

We continued our walk (which turned out to be 12 km/7 1/2 miles in all!), walking through passage ways that feel like you're back in time.

We stopped by our favorite cafe, Oberlaa, for fantastic gluten free desserts, which I completely forgot to take a picture of! But seriously...this is such a special place in downtown Vienna!

Remembered to take this from across the street when we went to a grocery store afterwards!

Afterward we wandered over to the Albertina Art Museum. On Claire's 16th birthday, almost eight years ago, we went for the first time to see their exhibition. If we'd had more time we would have gone again today, but instead, enjoyed their bookstore and the beauty outside.

She's more beautiful than any painting!

We had tickets for the train back home at 6 PM, so made our way back to the "Hauptbahnhof", the main station, for take out food and Pumpkin Spice lattes with oat milk!

It was an altogether lovely day with Claire, being in no rush and having very little agenda other than to just be with each other in a favorite place of ours!

There's more to the story after this point, but it deserves its own blog post!