Another great day in beautiful Vienna

This morning we were up early for a full morning's program. The coach took us on a tour of the major buildings and monuments in Vienna. It was then off to the Spanish Riding School. Even though we didn't actually see the horses perform it was very interesting to visit the arena, stables, equipment room and chief rider's apartment in the palace. The horses (all stallions) are white, although they are short (15 hands) and potbellied (apparently the perfect shape and size for a Lipizzaner). It was interesting to find out that they are all born dark and that it takes around eight years for them to turn perfectly white. 

Because our group was so small our guide took us on an additional walking tour of the pedestrian area. The highlight for Stephen and I was a return visit to Demel's the very famous cake shop in which we had lunch last week. However the guide took us into the museum which is housed amoung significant Roman ruins in the basement of the cake shop. Here are stored a rare collection of decorated cakes that are used for display in the front window - depending on the season and time of the year. They were fantastic!!!

The marble column seen in the photo above is from the Roman times. There were also remnants of a sophisticated viaduct. Very interesting. 

We are off to have dinner with the captain tonight at Portibellos. Should be very pleasant.