Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023: We are exploring Vienna today and are visiting venues normal tourists don’t get to see. We started out at the Naschmarkt, which is a permanent outdoor market with an amazing variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, seafood, and condiments from all over the world. It is more amazing than Whole Foods. From there we were driven to the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna’s main cemetery. We first visited the musicians’ section where we visited Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Mahler, Dumas, Gluck, Salieri and a memorial to Mozart. In April 1945 the area of the cemetery saw fierce fighting between the Russians invading Austria from the east and the conscripted Austrians and Hitler’s German Wehrmacht. We visited the compelling Russian Cemetery with the graves of hundreds of Russian soldiers who died there. Lastly, we visited my mom’s grave. It touched my heart when Eileen picked some wildflowers and placed them on her grave. Thank you Mark and Eileen. We then took the scenic route back into town, past the Riesenrad and Prater amusement park. The day was crowned by a fabulous dinner on the roof terrace of the renowned DO & CO Restaurant right across St. Stephen’s Cathedral. We returned to the Sacher Hotel in a horse-drawn carriage, a Fiaker. What a wonderful way to experience Vienna.
Exploring Vienna Today
