We had the morning open before we had to catch our train to Prague. We decided to take handy tram #1 to the Hofburg Palace. This was the Imperial Palace of the royal family, where the great empire of the Habsburgs ruled for more than 7 centuries. The Hofburg includes 18 buildings and is the largest palace complex in Europe.
We first accidentally happened upon the Schatzkammer (the Imperial Treasury), where they displayed some of the crowns, jewellery, robes, and trinkets of the once great Habsburg Dynasty. And some narwhal tusks, for some reason. Some of the items dated back 1000 years, such as the Imperial Crown which dates from 962, and some funny looking footwear.
The next thing we saw was the Kaiserappartements (Imperial Apartments). They started by taking you through rooms and rooms of all the old collections of porcelain and silver and gold dishes and centerpieces, and all the cutlery. Well, something had to happen to all that stuff after the end of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918. Believe it or not, there were 28 displays of it you could look at, and audio guides to boot. The most interesting fact is that porcelain only became acceptable to the monarchy after they had to sell all their gold dishes to finance the war.
Next came the Sisi Museum. There were 26 displays all dedicated to the empress Elizabeth, Franz Josef's wife. She was 16 when she was forced to marry her cousin, and from what we could tell, she despised court life and possibly him as well. She spent her whole reign being reluctant to fulfill her royal duties, and traveling as much as possible to get away from it. She took cocaine on a daily basis for "medicinal reasons". She was considered very beautiful and used this to her advantage. She had ankle length hair which took 2 to 3 hours a day to style. She was 5 foot 8 inches tall, and only weighed between 99 to 103 pounds. She was constantly dieting and there are rumours of bulimia. She experimented with different beauty regimes, including sleeping with a veal mask on her face every night. It was at this point that the king and queen got separate bedrooms.
The people loved Franz Josef and didn't think much about his wife until her sudden assassination in Geneva. The Italian anarchist had intended to assassinate someone else, but his intended victim changed his itinerary and the assassin changed his target to Elisabeth. He rushed up to her and stabbed her in the chest. She thought she had just been knocked over, and got up and got onto her boat. Later, she collapsed, the wound was discovered, and she was taken back to shore and her hotel, but it was too late. When Franz Josef received the news, he said, "You do not know how much I loved this woman." It was after this that she became a cultural icon.
Next came the Imperial Apartments, although they only allowed you to pass through 18 of them. It was all very similar to the Schonbrunn Palace that we toured a few days ago: The Audience Waiting Room, the Audience Chamber, the Conference Room, the Study, the Bedroom, the Salons, the Dining Room. We really didn't care which glasses were used for which wines, and which dishes were used for which courses.
We found our way back to our hotel. We had checked out this morning but left our luggage there. We sat in the hotel restaurant and had lunch, they actually found a gluten-free bun for Frankie's hamburger. We found our way to the train station, it was a different station than the one we came in at.
The train ride to Prague, Czech Republic took over 5 hours. It had one first class car which we took full advantage of. It was a smooth quiet ride, and we spent much of the time getting caught up on the blog.
Once we got into the Czech Republic, the scenery changed dramatically. It was hillier than Vienna. The houses are older, not as pretty, and not kept up.
The train station in Prague was nice. We bought a Prague Card and got some local currency, and then literally walked across the street to our hotel, The Boscolo. This is definitely a 5 star hotel, we weren't expecting that. We were met at the door by a bellboy who single-handedly carried our luggage up the 2 flights of steps to get into the building, which is 120 years old. The lobby was a huge empty room with a few tables and chairs for people to congregate, and a table for reception (not the normal desk).
Our room is very nice. The bellboy brought our luggage up for us and gave us a "tour" of the room, including the nearest fire exit in case of emergency. The best thing, it seems that this hotel is within walking distance of the Old Town and even getting across the bridge to the palace is only 20 minutes away.
Brief history of the Czech Republic: The Czech state used to be known as Bohemia and was formed in the late 9th century under the dominance of the Moravian Empire. It was gradually integrated into the Habsburg monarchy. Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918 after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after WWI. It was a democracy but became a communist ruled state in 1948. The communist regime collapsed in 1989, and this is when the Czech Republic and Slovakia split. The nice gentleman who checked us in informed us that all the food and customs and language is the same, the only difference is that Slovakia uses the euro and the Czech Republic uses koruna (crowns). The exchange rate is approximately 5 czk to 1$.
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