Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Vienna: Part the Third (Day of Cake)

When I say that this day, our last day in Vienna, was the day of cake, please do not think I'm being melodramatic or over-exaggerating for cakey effect. Understand. It was THE day of cake. All in all Kun-Wei and I split 4 pieces of cake. We each had a Viennese hotdog (see previous post) late in the afternoon but beyond that all we ate was CAKE.

This was because we made the unfortunate mistake of only finding the DELICIOUS cake places on the last day and consequently had to eat ALL THE DELICIOUS CAKE that we could fit into our stomachs in a mere...I dunno...12ish hours?

IF YOU LEARN NOTHING FROM THIS BLOG, PLEASE, LEARN THIS: GO TO CAFE CENTRAL SHOULD YOU EVER FIND YOURSELF LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE IN VIENNA.

And eat all the cake.

Kun-Wei and I started out the morning with this beauty. It was pure chocolatey goodness. It was so decadent that it literally melted in my mouth in a most delightful way. It was...it was pure magic. And a breakfast of champions.

Café Central is this super classy place and the prices were surprisingly reasonable. It wouldn't have mattered. I would have paid too much for a slice of that cake.

It had very lovely light fixtures.

Our next stop was Demel Konditorei. Honestly, Kun-Wei and I probably could have just sat at Café Central all day, stuffing our faces. However, after discovering that bit of delectable magic we decided to see what other deliciousness was out there waiting to be found. This cake was a rich, dense chocolate cake. Basically, I was in heaven. It was so moist and...oh man, I'm salivating just thinking about it.

We walked past a really pretty church (we did a lot of walking that day-had to at least attempt to burn off a few cake calories).

This church happens to be the Church of St. Charles completed in 1737. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI, ordered it built and named after his patron saint Charles Borromeo.

I don't know if you can tell or not but it is GORGEOUS.

Our next destination was the Belvedere Palaces. These are two buildings (Upper and Lower Belvedere) that was originally built for Prince Eugene and are now part of a really beautiful art museum.

Belvedere is beautiful enough by itself but it's also filled to the brim with absolutely gorgeous paintings-including Gustav Klimt's very famous "The Kiss."

Awwwww, look at it being all regal and splendid. :)

The gardens were also exquisite. Well-manicured and so cool to see from the upper windows of the art gallery.

It was a VERY windy day.

I don't know why exactly but I think that sphinxes are super cool and the ones at the Belvedere were EXTRA elegant.

I seriously could have used up all the space on my camera on just these gardens. I developed a bit of a fascination with ornate palacey gardens on this trip and my appreciation for gardening rose tenfold. And I started out REALLY liking gardening.

More garden pictures because I couldn't and can't help myself.

Pretty tree! Honestly, I'm pretty sure that Vienna must have one of the highest densities of gorgeous tree populations in the...well, probably in the universe. If I had a dollar for every lovely, flowering tree we passed in our wanderings than I would have consumed a great deal more cake.

After the Belvedere we went and hunted down what we though would be our last piece of cake for the day. This was the least remarkable of the lot but it was still pretty good. We got it at Café Sacher. It was a slice of the famous Sachertorte-apricot and chocolate cake. The apricot flavour was lovely but the cake was a bit dry.

We passed the Lipizzaner Riding School on our way back through Vienna. I fangirled out a little bit over the horses. A Lipizzaner show would have been INSANELY expensive but I guess seeing the curious faces of a couple of stunning horses is the next best thing...right?

To end the day, Kun-Wei and I made our way back to our favorite spot of the day: Café Central. There we spent an absurd amount of time dithering over the dessert display, trying to justify buying a slice of everything or maybe narrow down our choices a bit. Finally, Kun-Wei was decisive for us and lobbied successfully for the creme brulee cake. It was not hard to convince me that it would be a good choice.

Now, to understand how absolutely perfect this gorgeous morsel was let me walk you through it. The outer layer was a rich, very smooth chocolate ganache that I probably would have drunk out of a cup had it been offered to me. Sure, it would've given me instant diabetes and the sugar rush of the century, but damn, it was just so good. It's a good thing the cup wasn't offered. the inner part was a light chocolate cake that was so moist and soft and perfect that you almost wouldn't have know it was there if it weren't for the sublime flavour. It's like chocolate cake and mousse had a baby and then that baby was fed entirely on awesomeness steroids. It melted the instant it hit my tongue and was just...it was SO GOOD. And of course, the center was creme brulee and creme brulee is usually to die for but this was beyond anything I've ever tasted. Oh my goodness.

Needless to say, that was the perfect end to a pretty excellent day. Is it terrible that I would go back to Vienna just for the cake? I don't care. I would go back to Vienna in a heartbeat for the cake. Also for the other amazing stuff, but I would know deep down what it was all about.

I'm sorry if this wasn't terribly logical or coherent, I got SUPER distracted reliving the cake memories.

Mmmmmmmm...

Much love and cheers!

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