Spanish Riding School of Vienna

What a strange day… I managed to purchase online the absolute, very best seat in the house to see the world-famous Spanish Dancing Horses here in Vienna – front row centre.

Before leaving the apartment, I something quite sad happened, and the vibration of that seemed to then follow me…

I walked to the nearest taxi rank, entered a taxi, told the driver where I wanted to go and he said very rudely, loudly, and abruptly that he didn’t know where that was..??? I showed him on my phone where I wanted to go and he pressed the button to lock the doors and started yelling at me!!!

I pounded on the window while attempting to find the unlock button on my side – when I did, I got out, crying, and said “I hope your day gets better, sir, because you are the rudest man I have ever met and you must have had one horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE day to make you act this horrid!” …and I slammed the door, kicking myself for letting this get to me, kicking myself for not being more charitable to this man who was obviously in need of something positive in his life, walked to the next taxi in line, still crying, told him where I wanted to go – and he said “ok” and offered me a tissue.

What’s even stranger is that hardly anybody ever has seen me cry – and while something like this might disturb me, it wouldn’t normally bring me to tears – and certainly not in public.

Anyway, I arrived at the venue, only to find that my online ticket apparently should have been printed out before I arrived – they do not do phone scanning of tickets. I asked the woman if she could print it there – “sorry, we are not allowed”… I was about to just leave, when she said, “let me see what I can do”…

I successfully managed to be admitted and ended up sitting with some lovely Americans – and they were fascinated about my ability to pick where each of them grew up simply from me listening to them speak. That was fun. It was also fun giving them suggestions of where to go in Vienna, what do see, what to do…

The performance was stunningly beautiful.

Afterward, I decided to sit outside in the cafe and have a bite of lunch…

Oh, and the contraption on the right is a massive horse-walker.

…and even drowned my sorrows in chocolate!

On an earlier visit to Vienna, I took a day trip to the Lippizan stud farm in Piber: http://luxuriousnomad.com/lipizzaner-stud-farm-spanish-dancing-horses/

After I had my fill of wine and chocolate, I went out to the taxi rank to get a taxi back to the apartment and who should be the first taxi in line…..???????

I sat and waited for someone else to take that taxi, figuring I would take the next one. This is a major cab rank, so didn’t think it would take all that long.

For 40 minutes I sat and not one person took that taxi!!! People walked past left and right, but not one person got into that cab.

So, I decided to walk.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to go far and another vacant taxi came along and he was the nicest man – I gave him a huge tip just because I was so appreciative of his lovely manner in contrast to my earlier experience.

…and thankfully, this morning I awoke feeling again like my bright and chipper self.

They do not permit photography during the show, so here are some pages from the program…