The Grammar School at Leeds' BLOG

Day 7 The Spanish Riding School and Votivkirche Concert

6.30 a.m. and it is already hot. Today is meant to be 32 degrees - fortunately the programme consists of being inside at the Spanish Riding School, a quick lunch at the hotel, some retail therapy, followed by a concert at the magnificent Votivkirche. First stop was the Imperial Palace where the famous Lipazzaner horses are trained. With a 15 minute wait we quickly headed for the only shade in the square only to be entertained with a dispaly of carriage driving.

Once inside the Riding School we were shown the intricacies of driving two carriages in perfect unison and a coach and four. The highlight however was to see the mares galloping around the arena while their foals skitted skilfully between them, stopping, twisiting and turning at will. One American spectator remarked ‘beautiful nags aren’t they?’ - I assumed he was referring to the horses and not the choir - but there again!

As the main party headed back to the hotel the 6th form were allowed to remain in Vienna for an extended session of retail therapy. Like a swarm of hungtry locusts they descended on Mariahilfestrasse, the main shopping street over a kilometre in length - no problem to our Olympic shoppers. These finely tuned consumer athletes  were soon hurdling the counters, sprinting up the escalators to sift through the enormous quantities of sale items. They were soon joined by
the rest of the party who had miraculously reduced luch time to a few nanoseconds in the hope of extending ’shopping time’.
Meanwhile yours truly found an internet cafe with a decent broadband connection and then a pavement restaurant from where I could oversee the fashionistas’ progress. ‘What do you think of this sir?’ asked one girl holding up what I thought was a belt but turned out to be a skirt. ‘And this, and this, and this….’ Soon my table looked like the changing room of Trinny and Suzanna. However, I had learned from bitter experience on previous tours not to comment when the proverbial question was asked ‘Do you think my bum would look big in this?

A quick journey around the ‘ring’ brought us to the Votivkirche, a magnificent twin towered church built to commemorate the failed assassination of Emperor Joseph. The well oiled disembarkation machine swung into action and quicker than you could say ‘Wienersnitzel’ we had unpacked the piano, connected the power supply, erected the music stands and assembled the choir for a full rehearsal  - much to the delight of the constant stream of sightseers. An appreciative audience were treated to the best performance so far on tour. The highlight was the closing item ‘Eternity’ which had a number of the audience reaching for a tissue. Another brilliant effort - well done girls!