I wish I could be a European Emperor

Seriously, those imperial families knew how to collect stuff. Today we spent most of the day wandering through the various galleries of the "Kunsthistorisches" museum at the Hofburg palace compound. The collections were just spectacular. There was a whole gallery dedicated to medieval arms and armor; one dedicated to medieval and renaissance musical instruments; one to Egyptian, Roman, and Greek artifacts, and two huge painting galleries dedicated to the Austrian, Belgian, Italian, and Dutch masters. I'm not lying when I say that this set of museums rivals the Louvre in Paris in scope and size.

During the morning, we also took in some of the daily morning practice/workout for the Lipizzaner Stallions at the Spanish Riding School. Waste of money if you ask me, since all they did was prance around in the dirt with music playing over the P.A. system.

We had lunch at this awesome outdoor market called the "Naschmarkt," just outside the "Ringstrasse" near St. Charles' Church. Imagine a 4 block long farmers' market interspersed with vendors selling everything from bratwurst to gyros to fish sandwiches. Had it not been raining, it would have been really fun to walk around.

Speaking of rain, this is the first day where rain has had any material impact on our vacation. It rained for most of the afternoon from lunchtime until we turned in tonight. The forecast calls for good driivng weather over to Nurburg tomorrow, though. That's a good thing since it's going to be a loooong drive up there.