Wednesday begins with strong caffeine and sunshine glancing intermittently through gray sky. Interestingly, the apartment’s canister of sugar has several vanilla beans in it, which blooms a lovely aroma. The refrigerator: not so much: though it is totally empty, it smells like a 10-day-old dead duck.

So on our way to Tram D and the Opera House stop, we revisit the Spar for some baking soda.

We follow Rick Steve’s self-guided walking tour, passing the Opera House on our left, whose sidewalk no longer has embedded plaques of Vienna’s musical stars, pass the Sacher Hotel whose cafe invented the eponymous torte, and skirt the Albertina Museum, which we will visit with Monica (Cynthia’s book group buddy) later.

We get momentarily depressed looking at the Monument Against War and Violence in the small park across from the Albertina’s entrance, but enjoy sunnier skies and disposition as we walk down the Kartner Strasse, the wide carless shopping street flanked by grand old buildings whose ground floors are glass boxes of pricey goods beneath upper floors of 17th to 19th century Renaissance and Gothic facades with tall graceful windows.

We truncate our walk to be awestruck by the Albertina: once the home of King Albert and Maria Theresa (13 children, including Marie Antoinette) and full of their portraits and furniture and really amusing modern “takes” on old masters by an Austrian personality named Otto Waalkes.

But the Albertina is much more than that and, after we link with Monica, we wander through perhaps 30 rooms of expressionist, figurative, abstract avant-garde, early cubist, and surreal art collected by Herbert Batliner (attorney 1928-2019). David saw more art he loved by more artists he had forgotten or never heard of than he thought possible. To name just a few I thought arresting: von Jawlensky, Macke, Pechstein, Rohlfs, von Motesiczky, Sedlacek, Wacker, Grigorjew … look ‘em up.

We leave Monica and have dinner in a small family restaurant where we are crammed at a table for two between two large groups of white/blue haired old friends eating before they go the same concert we are about to attend.

The concert hall is grand. The conductor is beloved. The cello soloist gets four standing ovations and plays an encore. The acoustics are perfect. The seats are comfortable.

It pours rain as we walk in the totally opposite direction we should have to try to get our tram to home.

We stay up at home to welcome Bernadette, who arrives around midnight. Bisou. Bisou. Laughter. It’s been three years. She looks GREAT. Bisou. Bisou. G’Night.