so we had easter 3 minute eggs . . . served in these oh-so-euro-modern egg-cups . . . we also had yogurt, museli, fresh and dried fruit, papaya juice, several cappucinos, and another plate of like, cold-cuts, as you see . . .
So then we took the train over to the Kunst Historisches Museum. I noticed on the platform as we waited that we had about 15 minutes till 10, when the museum opened . . . "Perfekt" I pronounced.
We found our way to the Museum plaza from the train station easily. I stopped on the way in to take this picture of a dumbo outside the Natural History museum. We got there just at 10, as it was opening.
Place is huge, of course, full of past masters, Bruegels (younger & older), Tintoretto, Titian, Carravagio, but the main attraction was a large exhibit studying just one painting, Die Malkunst (The Art of Painting) by Vermeer. Now when we were in Amsterdam last xmas we'd seen the Girl with a Pearl Earring, which impressed me so much I bought a poster, and declared myself newly a vermeer snob. Mrs says this (die malkunst) is the only painting Vermeer never sold, but instead kept as a marketing tool to prospective clients . . . so the exhibit studied the elements and strategy of the painting (all news to me), and included props (like the trumpet) . . . lotta words . . . but I bot a poster of this one too . . . the GWPE looks so kewl the way we had it framed I wanted to do the same for this.
The museum wouldn't let us photograph in that exhibit, or in some other areas, but when I saw people taking pictures openly, I tho't about what I had wanted to take pictures of, but hadn't . . . what I mostly came up with were these three pictures of Salome with the head of John the Baptist . . . saw an opera-concert of Salome by Strauss earlier this year and watched the movie with Rita Hayworth, too, dancing the dance of the 7 veils . . .va-va-voom!
None of the pictures turned out as well as they should . . . with the good camera I got a flash (I forgot to turn it off and didn't notice); with the phone camera I never get as good a resolution as I want. But I liked the pithy characterization of Salome in this one especially.
It took a couple of hours to speed walk the picture galleries, slowing down at the pictures that interested us, when we recognized the artists -- they have a lot we didn't need to examine . . . even so, doubling back to get a few photos didn't take much time . . . 
then we headed over to their antiquities exhibit -- the egyptian exhibit is very large and had details we hadn't seen before. I liked this hippo . . . very nile-ish...if you know what I mean . . .
but there Greek & Roman exhibits were very interesting too . . . bearing in mind we were in Naples & Pompeii just a couple of months ago, we still judged these exhibits very fine . . . in Naples they had a hall of busts of caesars & philosophers that was amazing not only for the number but for the size of the sculptures, but they did well here, too . . . I'm calling that standing figure an etruscan. . . pre-roman . . . 
but the humour in this small bust seems so modern . . .and so timeless . . . gee, you can get great pictures out of those digital cameras if you just turn off the flash and hold it still . . . 
this is the gallery that was an amazing collection like the one in Naples, tho' the individual busts were smaller . . . you could stop and ponder every single one of them . . . as if they were a caesar or a philosopher . . .
these 3 pompeiian portraits were part of a larger group, but I couldn't get a picture of more, and show any detail . . . might have been from a post office wall in pompeii . . .8^P . . .
Well, we were famished by then, so we trained back over to where we had missed the Wiener Schnitzel the day before, Figmuller's. There was no line. We walked right in. They did seat us with another family of 4 at a table for 6. We didn't mind. Out of the 6 of us 5 of us ordered the same thing. Wiener Schnitzel, potato salad, and green salad. We also had glasses of Gruner Veltliner. I started ordering in German. I tho't I was doing well, but the waiter, waved me off, said, "In English is OK!"
I know that Schnitzel looks as big as it was, it overflowed the plate, but the salad bowls look deceptively small in this picture: they were enormous, but very deliscious when you got to the bottom of the bowl where the green salad and the potato salad merged . . . 8^) . . . but look at those beer mugs of wine . . . at least 10 ounces 
It was fantastic . . . doesn't leave any room for dessert . . . and kinda makes you want to take a nap instead of museum-trekking, but we pressed on.
We beetled over on the tram (trains and trams are pretty easy to navigate there . . . but sometimes on the trams its a challenge to figure out the pick up points) to the Belvedere, the estate of one Prinz Eugen . . . his picture is everywhere in Wien . . . and maybe he was an ok guy, in a teutonic sort of way, but looking at him makes me want to charge the Bastille. 
Guy had a faboulous estate, tho', no two ways about it. The Belvedere has an Upper Palace and a Lower Palace, meaning two separate chateuas, about a kilometer apart, with a giant garden in between . . . now the garden was full of flowers, but maybe it is during other parts of the year, or maybe not, because of all the foot traffic, still a pretty impressive facade.
We only went to the Upper Palace, we went, like everybody else, specifically to see the Klimts there, including the Kiss, that every single girl I knew in college had a poster of . . . which fact I vaguely recall Rod Stewart memorialized in some song in the 70s.
We liked seeing the original after all these years. In addition to all the other klimts that reminded us very much of Mucha, the Czech Artist almost as much in evidence in Prague as Prinz Eugen in Wien. We liked it so much we bought a scarf and a tie made from that image. Not at the museum gift shop, tho', across the street, where Mrs had seen a sign advertising discounts as we walked from the tram to the museum. The gregarious owner pretended to give us a discount on a second scarf and we pretended to be grateful . . . 8^D . . .
AFter all that walking and shopping, it was hard to believe but we were hungry again, but marilyn had the ideal spot for us: a little kiosk in some shady area, not exactly a park, just some leftover space between buildings, subways, streets where there is a leafy opportunity to sit outside, sip viennese coffee and eat apfel strudl.
We tried to hook back up with Big Red & CPT, but they were still in the Alps (at 4 pm), so we went over to the Prater by ourselves. We did see the Carousel used in The 3rd Man (orson Welles), but we can't hardly say that made the trip worth it . . . what a dump . . . maybe at night you could see pretty lights, but it was just loud and cheap looking to us. It's all very large tho', so by the time we walked around that, we were ready to head home and stretch out.
Mrs said, "It was a perfekt day: we had easter eggs for brekky, got to the museum just as it was opening, got into Figmuller's without waiting, saw the Klimt Kiss, bought a tie & scarf for 1/3rd the price of the Museum's, had apfel strudl at 4pm, just when you're supposed to, and didn't get lost on the trains or trams even once!"
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