Day 4, Vienna

Well today we ventured out to do much more than we've done in the previous days. Our number one goal was to take a boat tour down the Danube (which in the city is only a canal, and not the actual grand river, but hey, it's water, it's blueish.)... So after a bit of walking around the shopping district around our hotel, and then a rest, we hopped in a taxi at the opera house and asked him to take us to the boat launching spot. But somehow we ended up with a surplus of time--an hour to kill before we had to show up for the boat tour--and I noticed that we were only a few blocks away from Kunst Haus Wien, the famous art museum that was "redecorated" by one of my favorite hippy artists, Hundertwasser. It was just crazy to me that I was here in Vienna and only a few hundred meters away from this place I've been wanting to see, and there I'd be with an hour to spare, but not going to see it?? Ok, so I took a chance and asked the taxi driver to take us to Kunst Haus Wien instead of the boat launch. Of course, this is no place for Gramma to be, since Hundertwasser created basically what Dr. Seuss would've done if he were an architect-- No even floors, no straight walls... It's a nightmare for the unsure of foot. And anyone who's even slightly prone to dizziness, forget it. So I knew we wouldn't have time to tour the whole museum, and I couldn't leave Gramma waiting in the lobby while I ran to see the upstairs rooms (if she'd decided to try to find the ladies room, she'd've ended up flat on her face). So we just poked around the downstairs together, the gift shop, and such.. Meanwhile, the taxi driver had taken off, and when we came back out of the museum, there were no taxis to be found. Sorely underestimating the distance back to the boat launch, I figured we'd walk a bit to the next intersection and hopefully find a taxi there (no taxi) and then we tried the next intersection (still no taxi) and then Gramma was starting to lose patience with me (big time) but by this point we were more than halfway to the boat place. So ok, I took Gramma on a long walk that she didn't deserve! And I ended up having to apologize up and down and up again... Lucky for me, we made it to the boat on time for the tour, and we were able to sit down at a comfortable table and order some campari. And to make it up to her, I gave Gramma a shoulder rub while we floated down the canal (complete with a lock! So cool!)... Ok, so that's the story of how Gramma almost fired me from my tourguide gig today.
But wait! There's more.
We scored some 7euro tickets to the ballet at the opera house tonight, which put us waaaaaay up in the nosebleeds, but it sounded fantastic and at least what was going on stage left looked pretty nice! The ballet was Romeo and Juliet, all done traditional style. We were looking down on the whole thing, especially the orchestra, and I noticed these four mandolin players who had to sit through just about the whole show, all three acts, only to play twice. And I'm thinking, "man, why can't I get gigs like that??" Well we were lookin' fine and feelin' fine, just like the rest of the place... Not too much to do up there in the mile-high gallery except gaze across the horseshoe-shaped theater at all the other people, also lookin' good. I'm finding there's a lot more to this operahouse entertainment than just the show.
But wait, there's more.
So after the ballet (sad ending, by the way) Gramma says she wants to get a bite to eat. And she wants to go back to the cafe where we saw the cimbalom player two nights ago. So we go there, he's there playing again, I naturally grab a table sort of near the back, mainly away from the drafty windows and door. When the cimbalom player started playing "Autumn Leaves", Gramma insisted that we sit at the table closest to the cimbalom. Whoa! That's cool by me, so we moved all our stuff over to that table and ended up staying and listening and talking with the musician until the restaurant closed. Now it's after midnight, and Gramma and I have just packed our bags to get ready to leave for Italy tomorrow. She's bummed because she doesn't want to leave Vienna, but we're about to get to the part I've really been looking forward to! Nothing more exhilarating than meeting strangers who share your DNA.