Our Last Full Day with the Rick Steves Tour

 We had breakfast around 7 am.  Then we met down in the lobby at 8:15 to start the day.  We took the underground subway today. We got off at the Kettenbruckengasse stop. Gerhard met us. 

 We walked to his Third Man Museum.  Gerhard is quite the collector of memorabilia from this time period.   He recommends the movie and the book by Graham Greene. Orson Wells was one of the actors.

Gerhard has an amazing amount of stuff that he has collected over the years.  I haven't seen the movie.  I guess there also was  a TV movie series.

Jana and Gerhard

This shows the grate that was used in the movie to pretend to go to the sewer system, It really goes to the river.  No sewer system looks like how they showed it in the movie.

We had 45 minutes in the Naschmarkt to have a snack or just a sit-down break.

I had a latte at the Naschmarkt Deli.  It was huge.

We walked by all the stalls to get to our next meeting spot.

Lots of produce as well as touristy shops.

In most situations the pedestrians have the right-of-way, as long as you stay out of the bike lane. The bike lanes are usually clearly marked and in many places they are painted green.

Opera House

The Opera House is centrally located.  All the trams seem to stop there. We went on a tram to the Belvedere Palace to see some art, mostly Klimt, though there were a few paintings done by other people.

Amazing ceiling.

The Evil Mothers by Segantini

Tina Blau

Judith by Klimt

The Kiss by Klimt

We also saw some of his paintings which were not well known and some that were not finished.  It was interesting.

We decided to go back to Naschmarkt for lunch so we took the tram to the Opera House and then walked.  We finally found a place to eat, Do-An. We wanted something light because we are having a big dinner later.  It would be our last dinner together. The tour officially ends after breakfast in the morning.

Baby spinach salad with grilled halloumi (cheese), cherry tomatoes, avocado & raspberry walnut dressing.  It was delicious.

After lunch we did some dinking, looking for magnets.  We were going to ride the tram around on the Ringstrasse by tram and to follow along with Rick Steves audio guide, but we got on the wrong tram and going in the wrong direction so we decided to just stay on that tram and go back to the hotel.  We needed to have time to have a rest break before meeting at 6:15 pm for dinner.

We got to the street where our hotel was and realized that the map did not show that we were on a bridge.  Luckily, we found the stairs to go down to our street.

A lot of cranes here as well.

This is where we went for dinner.  It was at the end stop of the D line train.  It was about a half hour ride.

Beautiful place

Nice upstairs room.

They served their wine.  It was good.

Then they brought out the food!!! What a feast.  

My full plate

Then the desserts came out.

My plate

Then some candid shots of the group.

Paul was my buddy and Laura was Jeanne's buddy.

We had some speeches, which were fun and heart-warming.  We got to tell Jana how wonderful she was.  

Jana gave each of us a card with an Egon Schiele painting and a little house from Český Krumlov.  And she told us what our Czech name would be with the date of our "name day". My name is Barborka and name day is Dec 4th, which is also St Barbara's date. Jeanne's is Janička, May 24th, Sharon's is Sarka, June 30th and Kris' is Kristynka, July 24th. (I'll add these when they get up)

I liked this Egon Schiele painting.

Time to go, so we got back on the tram. 

Once we got back to our street we stopped and made a big circle.  Jana gave out a final treat, some apricot liqueur. 

It was good.  It was a perfect ending of the day and of the tour.  We will see some people at breakfast.