Spanish Riding School. Vienna at night. Babel Tower Installation

Horses doing Exercise To Music!

How fantastic is THIS!

For a small fee the general public can go and watch the beautiful white Lipizzaner stallions practising their tippy tappy toes and their dressage waltzes. These beautiful white stallions were named after their first stud in Slovenia and...

OH MY DAYS.

What a treat.

Not only was the setting breath taking, we were lucky enough to see one of them perform his rear up back kick that people pay hundreds of pounds to see. The capriole move where the horse kicks out when already up on hind legs was often used in military situations as form of defence and is quite natural albeit also a skill.

The Spanish Riding School in Vienna is the only institution in the world which has practiced for more than 450 years and continues to cultivate classical equitation in the Renaissance tradition of the Haute Ecole – which can also be found on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

Since 1920, the stud located in the West Styrian village of Piber has been home to the famous Lipizzaners. As the only stud in Austria, Piber’s role is to breed Lipizzaner stallions which will later demonstrate their skills in the world-famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna.

The Spanish Riding School is set in the Hoffburg Palace so after an apple strudel (well we WERE in Vienna) and a coffee (tea abroad is hopeless) we had a walkabout, it looks a spectacular place.

It had all been fabulous but we had a river boat to catch so we walked back through the park past Mother Theresia

pausing only to plank outside the Kunsthistorisches Museum

through the shops...

and the leafy avenues

back to Leonardo for our transfer to AROSA DONNA

before going straight back out again to see Vienna at night.

Yet another huge bonus! The Kunsthistorisches Museum had an installation called The Babel Tower and the lights were stunning. It was only hours earlier I had planked on those steps.

Could today get any better? 

Beautiful white stallions, 

apple strudel. 

a plank and a leafy stomp,

 pretty lights, 

and Vienna at night.

Lovely.

And THEN Husb asked the river boat crooner for some BeeGees. WELL!!

What a brilliant day. :)