One more fabulous day in Vienna

We began our day on a site-seeing tour of the city...
This is Belvedere Palace
Allison sang the theme song to "Mr. Belvedere" for us.

Spent quite a bit of time at the Hofburg Palace--magnificent and massive!

Just loved this shot of the mini-parade passing by...

Me and Allison with Mozart. The Wiener people LOVE Mozart!

Had a fantastic lunch at the Australian Pub. Apparently, when Ronald Regan was president, he made a speech and mistakenly said "Australia" when he was referring to "Austria."
The Australian people LOVE this. They have a pub on every street and signs everywhere that say, "There are no kangaroos in Austria!"

We've made our mark.

Yep...16...they can't even really "card you" right?
You wouldn't even have a driver's license!

After lunch we walked around and shopped a bit and then came back to the cool hotel room. Allison continued her quest to finish Harry Potter 7 and I took a little nap.

Tonight we decided to treat ourselves to that magnificent dinner in Vienna. We took the subway into the city and dined at the Imperial Hotel. It, too, is a former palace.

It is an incredibly gorgeous place!

Our table...

There must have been at least four waiters taking care of us...one brought the menus, one brought the wine (Allison had a Coke of course!), one moved over a little table for me to put my purse on and one brought out our appetizer shown here. He said, "With compliments from the chef this is a peach soup with lobster puffed pastry." Delicious. The bread basket had four or five different kinds of bakery items in it AND yet another waiter came with a fancy plate offering us flower shaped butter. We ordered Lobster Bisque and it was brought out in a silver chaffer and ladled out for us. It was quite possibly the best soup I have ever tasted!

The bisque and bread was really all we could eat...but then they brought out this little tray of pastries with my coffee. (PS--the coffee ALL OVER Europe is so incredibly good. It is hot and strong and thick AND it is ALWAYS served with HOT milk!)
We asked the waiter if we could please take the little pastries home with us and he wrapped them up very nicely for us.
The entire dining experience was out of this world!

We came back to the hotel and found several members of our group sitting in the lobby talking. Allison and I offered them the pastries we had brought back...and they were thrilled! As they delighted in the mini-napoleon and fruit tart and chocolate truffles, we all shared tales of our travel adventures...which always seem to include memories of good food.
Earlier tonight, as we walked back to the subway station admiring the moon shining bright in the Vienna sky, I told Allison that I truly have never been happier in my life.
I have tears in my eyes as I write this...I am so very grateful for these experiences...
I soak it all in and it fills up my heart with joy.
This is exactly where I want to be.