An evening and a day....

Before we left Melbourne we booked for dinner in Vienna to celebrate Tonys birthday which was on the day we flew out. We chose a restaurant called Steiereck which is situated in Stadt park. It's an elegant white building with a large verandah and has been renovated to allow modern restaurant requirements. It proved to be a very formal and efficient experience. The seats were ruby velvet arm chairs, the table was round and there was a small curved table adjacent to that to be used for serving purposes. We were treated to multiple appetisers before consulting the menu for rest of our meal. We chose a six course degustation with matched wines which proved a very interesting and worthwhile experience.
One thing I must describe although I don't have a photo unfortunately is the bathroom experience. Firstly the cubicle was about 2 metres sq. it contained a toilet as you would expect but the rest was both colourful and a bit weird. There was a canary yellow basin about 2/3 metre diameter and then there was a bright blue trumpet looking thing suitably placed for an inconceivable purpose! The last structure was another trumpet like thing that faced upwards and was obviously to contain used hand towels. Then of course there was the flushing business. There was none to be seen so I assumed it was a self flushing device, but no, moving away didn't work. Then I noticed a chain flush in amongst some fabric silver fringing above the toilet, so I moved to pull it and as soon as I touched it, bingo!
We got home about 11pm and were a bit worse for wear so this morning was spent lolling about. This afternoon we walked to Petersplatz and had a look in St Peters church. It is typical of the heavily baroque style one would expect of a Viennese church of the 18th century. Then we strolled down to the Hofburg Palace, along the road that goes though the building into the Heldenplatz and out onto the Opernring to find our way to Karntnerstrasse. We had expected this road to be full of exclusive unattainable shopping but found it was mostly a large shopping mall with ordinary fairly boring shops. Just before we re-entered the Stephensplatz at the north end we came upon a Wiener workstatte shop which was full of original and replicas of pieces designed by members of the secession movement. It is part exhibition and part retail. We will probably go back for another look.
Since we were feeling a bit more amenable today, we took another look in St Stephan's. We also checked out the Manner (famous for it biscuits) shop. It's too touristy so we didn't buy anything. Then we trekked home via the very beautiful clock pictured at the bottom of the blog only to go out after dinner for a much needed ice-cream!