Off again, weather sunny and wonderful again (sorry Cleveland!), this time to MAK, where we had breakfast on Monday but whose museum was closed then. Now we could see the museum, too. This is sort of a museum of arts & crafts, design and decoration, rather than of the fine arts. Miles of exotic carpets from 14th-century Persia and beyond, Biedermeier decorative objects, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Klimt and Wagner and Mucha and more. See the incredibly modern tableware setting from about 1910 (termed "barbaric" at the time). From MAK we met our driver (smile) and went to the Pasqualati Beethoven house (named after the owner), one of a few dozen places the great composer lived in in Vienna over the years. See his actual piano! Here he wrote Egmont and the Opuse 59 #3 Finale, of which we saw the actual manuscript. Then off we went to the further suburb of Grinzing, with its steep old streets and old-style taverns known as heuriger: at one of which we dined. Superb! Kaiserschmarn for dessert: do you Natalie & Whitney remember this? A walk around the neighborhood took us to another Beethoven house (in which was preserved a lock of the great man's hair), where he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament in 1802. But the crowning event of the day, no, the entire week, was a visit to: HOFER (the Austrian branch of Aldi's)! Snapped up some goodies and then staggered home (courtesy of our driver again), to pack, do email, clean the apartment, and generally get ready for the next day, and... PRAGUE!
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