Artstetten Castle (Schloss Artstetten) was the home to Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his family until the tragic events in Sarajevo in 1914…

The castle is still owned by the same family and they live in it all year round…

Note to self:  I want a bathtub like this, but preferable with steps to get in and out!  🙂

As we were leaving, the lovely lady behind the counter with whom we had been chatting in a strange mix of part English, part German, part Italian, asked if we wanted the keys to the crypt..?

This is the family crypt…

…and this literally is the key!!!

Hmmmmm…  but I couldn’t manage to get it to open……….

Not to worry – that’s what men are for!  🙂  Thank you, Alexander…  🙂

…and continuing on our way to our next destination…

~ Bella

 

Donna, Alexander and I set off for a day of exploring the Viennese countryside, but first we went hunting to find a cow and wolf playing backgammon…

Success!

“In the 15th century, Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini, better known later in life as Pope Pius II, described all the fine houses of Vienna as being painted inside and out with fabulous scenery. Like the marginalia found in illuminated manuscripts, the houses would have featured religious and historic portraiture, along with some humorous imagery for good measure.”  Source, Atlas Obscura

The painting dates approximately to 1509…  Yes, FIFTEEN-O-NINE.  Isn’t that amazing?  Well, I think it is…

Do you recall an earlier post where Alexander and I were discussing manifesting principles and we used a Bentley – since when he finishes his studies, that is his ambition – to own a Bentley…  Well, we three were in the car, again discussing manifesting Bentleys and what should cruise past us at the exact moment..?

…and so from one type of beauty to another…

This is our first destination, the home of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand and his family before husband and wife were brutally executed…

…but for that, you need to go to the next post…  🙂

~ Bella

 

Leaving the majestic horses, we made our way back to Graz to find the ‘Stairs of Reconciliation’…

No matter where you look, there are cyclists everywhere in Graz…

The archway on the right is where we are headed…

…and through the small door on the left…

Completed in 1438 under the guidance of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, this is the entrance to the Stairs of Reconciliation…

I love looking at the slight curve in the step, the result of centuries of feet having come into contact with it…

This is what is known as a Doppelwendeltreppe, or “Double Spiral Staircase”…

It is known as the “stairs of reconciliation” for if you go separate ways, you will ultimately reunite.

It is powerfully beautiful – just putting one’s hand on the stone and feeling its strength yet seemingly weightless quality as it rises into the air, one can but marvel at the craftsmanship of the unknown architect and builder…

As we were leaving, a lovely young couple arrived to play a delightful game that apparently dates back centuries…  The girl goes one way, the guy goes the other, and they kiss when they meet…

…and back home in beautiful Vienna after an amazing day!

Feeling ever so blessed…

~ Bella

 

 

…and now we head to the Lipizzaner Stud Farm in Piber, Austria – and being a horsey-girl, this was such an incredible treat!  Most know of the famous Spanish Riding Horses, but waht few realise is the breed, Lipizzaner, is Europe’s oldest cultural horse breed, with their origin going back to the year 1580.

Welcome to the Lipizzaner Stud in Piber!

This (below) is Piber Castle, and was formerly the Abbey of St. Lambrecht.  The administration of this amazing stud is housed in the castle, and has been since the stud was created 1798 for the purpose of breeding military horses.

The Piber Stud is the only location containing foundation bloodstock from all 15 classically recognized mare families; and only stallions from the Spanish Riding School are used as breeding stallions, with all six classic stallion bloodline families being used.

This girl and I became fast friends with lots of cuddles and her regularly burying her head into my chest…

Alas, they wouldn’t let me take her home…

This little guy was sound asleep and snoring!  I had never heard a horse snore…

(below)  Yours truly getting friendly with the little ones…

This fellow was born in 1979 – imagine it!  He is almost 40 years old!

…and on our way again…

Do you recall the building with no straight lines?  This was designed by the same fellow…

No matter how one looks at it, this (below) looks strange…

…and of course, every shopping centre needs a fully functional fighter plane in their parking lot…

…and next stop, back in Graz, the Stairs of Reconcilliation…

~ Bella

 

Anyone who has seen “Under the Tuscan Sun” (or if you are like me and have seen it so many times you could just about recite the entire script), will recognise the following:

Martini: Signora, between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come.

I have always been fascinated by that idea – and the person who had that dream to build it in the first place…

…and today I actually WENT THERE!  …and that was only a tiny part of an otherwise amazing day!

But first…

I was picked up – this time at a respectable 9:30am, and our first stop was what is proclaimed to be Vienna’s most elegant coffee houses (and having now been there, I do agree)…

…and along the way, it was fitting that we passed the Steiermark (Styria) festival, as this was where we were headed for the majority of our trip…  Styria [from wikipedia] “is a mountainous, forested state in southern Austria, known for its wine, spas and castles. Graz, the riverside state capital, blends Renaissance and baroque architecture with modern designs such as Murinsel, an artificial island made of glass and steel, and the alienlike Kunsthaus, a contemporary art museum. A funicular runs up Schlossberg, a hill topped by the Uhrturm, a 16th-century clock tower.”

…but back to the coffee house…

From their website:  Franz Landtmann, 1873 – Franz Landtmann did not plan to open just any old coffee house: it was to be the most elegant in the city. When he unlocked the doors on 1 October 1873, Landtmann demonstrated his pioneering spirit – with nothing but construction sites all around the new establishment. The splendour of the Ringstraße was nowhere to be seen; there was no Burgtheater next door; the Rathaus and the University were only just being built. But the residents of Vienna were thrilled, and Café Landtmann was a hit.

…and I love any establishment with this selection of automobiles in the parking area…

Since 1976, the Cafe Landtmann has been owned by the Querfeld family, who saved it from being turned into a bank!

 

Here, you can view some of the Landtmann Magazines that give you even more information:

• Landtmann_Magazin1
• Landtmann_Magazin2
• Landtmann_Magazin3
• Landtmann_Magazin4
• Landtmann_Magazin5
• Landtmann_Magazin6
• Landtmann_Magazin7

 

Now, on to our next destination, the world-famous dancing horses of Vienna…

This was just the prelude for our real horse-related destination – their breeding ranch up in the mountains… but more about that soon…

For now, this is a sneak peek at their exercising…

Then back into Michaelerplatz and on our way…

I love the architecture here… whether it is baroque, medieval, Victorian or modern – it all blends beautifully…

…although I am not so sure I would want this on my house…

…and we head up, up, up into the Alps…

Oh, and from what I can gather, this sign is essentially ‘roadworks ahead’…

Past some more medieval castles (there are soooooo many of them here, it is wonderful!)…

…along a road that reminds me of the crazy narrow, winding roads in Italy…

Lots of energetic cyclists…

…and finally, Gloggnitz where the Semmering line commences.

The Semmering Line was the first mountain railway in Europe built with a standard gauge track and is commonly referred to as the world’s first true mountain railway.  It was the brainchild of  Carl von Ghega, and built between 1848 and 1854.

…and tucked away down here…

…is one of the original carriages…

She’s so cute!

[from Wikipedia] The Semmering line “features 14 tunnels (among them the 1,431 m summit tunnel), 16 viaducts (several two-storey) and over 100 stone arch bridges and 11 small iron bridges. The stations and the buildings for the supervisors were often built directly from the waste rock dug out when making the tunnels.

Across an overall track length of 41 km the Semmering railway overcomes an altitude difference of 460 m; on 60% of its length the gradient is 2.0-2.5% (equivalent to a 1-meter difference in altitude on a 40 m route distance) and 16% exhibit a curvature radius of only 190 m.”  …and you can see one of the viaducts in these pictures… and some of the tunnels later in this post…

One of the other elements I love about this is that the Semmering railway had a focus on “landscape gardening”, in that it attempted a harmonious combination of ‘technology and nature’.

…and, of course, this being Austria, there are people walking in the middle of nowhere…

Welcome to Graz…

…and one of the original Semmering locomotives…

From here, we continued on to our next destination, being the childhood home of Arnold Schwarzenegger…

~ Bella

What do pink bunny rabbits, the Vienna Woods, monasteries, and boat trips in underground Nazi airplane factories (yes, you read that correctly!) all have in common?

They were all part of just one more day exploring Austria… but let’s start with yesterday afternoon.  I heard the unmistakable clip-clop of horses’ hooves outside, so peered out the window (since the horses do not normally go past my door)…

Because of the works to lay down new light-rail tracks, the horses have been diverted past my home sweet home…  What a delight!

OK, so now only my day in the woods…  Starting yet again just after the sun has woken up…

…and the meeting point was beside “the pink bunny rabbit”…

…I found winged horses…

…and I found swans…

…and then…  A pink bunny!

Btw, I think I would love any city that has Jaguars as taxis…

Now having safely found my tour group, we eventually headed off… (with “if you go down to the woods today, you’d better go in disguise…”

UPS seem to be doing their bit for the environment and ditching motor vehicles…

These balconies were fascinating!

…through the red light district…

The sky was extraordinarily beautiful…

No, that’s not Sasquatch – do you remember my post through the Swiss Alps where it seemed people in Austria went walking miles from anywhere?  Well, we are in Austria, miles from anywhere…

Our first stop – Meyerling where Crown Prince Rudolph (the only son and heir to the throne) and his mistress died (murder, suicide, we will never know for certain, but there is overwhelming evidence that it was sadly two lovers taking their own lives) – and this event ultimately started a series of dominoes to fall that ended up sparking WWI.

By the way, one of the benefits of having a mobility challenge is that the crowd has usually dispersed by the time I get to where we are all going!  LOL!  Makes for much better photos.  🙂

This (below) is Kaiser Franz Joseph, Rudolph’s father…

 

 

…and off to a Benedictine Abbey…

 

 

It was magnificent being in the church and listening to the monks practice…

On the road again, further into the Vienna Woods…

…to an underground lake that was once a Nazi airplane factory!

I was very proud of myself – on just this section of the trip, I managed almost 200 stairs AND walked over one kilometre underground…  I feel ever so blessed that physically, today was a good day – and soooooo appreciative for my folding hiking stick, without which I could not have managed this feat – and also sooooooooo appreciative for the lovely people in the tour who didn’t complain when on two occasions I slowed down the group.

This room (below) was used in ‘The Three Muskateers’ movie…

This (below) was also used in the muskateers’ movie…

Our first glimpse of the lake… that was once a gypsum mine, before being drained during WWII and being used for the production of Nazi Heinkel He 162 jet fighters.

…and now we set off on our boat…

Behind this door is enough water to flood the entire are up to the roof and beyond…

Remember those 200 or so steps I mentioned..?

…and finally back to daylight!

Past Liechtenstein Castle…

…and Wagner staring back at me from passing cars…

Due to an accident ahead, it took longer than expected to return…

I found the architecture on the southern side of Vienna to be very interesting…

These guys seemed to have as much paint/plaster over them as possibly on the walls!

…and back home to a magical sunset…

Yet another glorious day!

Goodnight, dear Friends!

~ Bella