Just be glad this post isn't all about my sinuses

Since I woke up sick Monday morning I have left the apartment exactly twice: once last night, because a friend happened to be in town for one night only, and once today, because we had an appointment at a potential wedding reception venue (which was VERY exciting—I'll start posting more about wedding planning when things start firming up). To put it mildly, I am stir crazy. I have lost all perspective on what's interesting, as evidenced by the fact that as I sat down here to type my daily post, I was considering writing about either a) my persistent cold symptoms (OMG MUCUS), or b) the healing/distracting power of housecleaning.

Seriously.

But then I remembered, WAIT! I have pictures! I can catch up on things past, back in the day when I was not spending my hours wallowing in wedding blogs and Big Love (I'm in the midst of Season 2—sweet Lord, that sh*t's addictive). I will take you all the way back to Saturday evening, when CM and I went out in search of photo ops and ended up wandering around the city center, exploring new streets and mentally flagging restaurants to try and shops to revisit.

I have a colleague at the Met who lived in Vienna once upon a time for a while, I think it might have been a decade ago. He loves to wax nostalgic about our fabulous city, and has put in orders for Milka chocolate and Julius Meinl coffee for me to bring back to New York. He also told me I should look for a restaurant/bar he used to frequent here.

Trouble is, he couldn't remember the name of it, not exactly. He thought it was Spiritus Sanctus, or maybe Sanktus Spiritus, he wasn't sure. And he was pretty sure he knew where it was, in a little alley behind the Stephansdom, but he couldn't be certain which one, but maybe it was called Kampfengasse, or Kumpfgasse, or something similar?

So when we found ourselves by the Stephansdom with some time to kill before we met friends for dinner, we set out to find it. I did not have high hopes. After all, it had been 10 plus years since he was there, and Google Maps didn't know what the hell we were talking about.

And then there was Kumpfgasse, right off the Singerstraße where it was supposed to be. We wandered down the little side street, turned a corner, and there it was:

Oh. SANTO SPIRITO. Of course.

It was closed (clearly), and for a minute we thought maybe it was out of business, or they were on  Urlaub (vacation), but no, it was 5:30 and they opened at 6.

We took a few pictures to send to my friend, and then we kept walking with the promise to come back for dinner sometime.

But we couldn't wait, so after dinner we went back there, and they were open.

15/365

Isn't it lovely? We had drinks (Aperol spritzers) and dessert (Haselnuss Palatschinken). Opera calendars from all the companies in town were on the wall, as well as prints of opera scenes. Monteverdi was playing on the stereo. It's adorable and so cozy, and we would have never found it if we hadn't been looking for it.

I'm so delighted to be here, living in a town with history, a town with restaurants that have been open for a couple hundred years, a town where I can trust that 10 years after we leave, we'll be able to visit all our favorite places and they'll still be there.

Although I should probably mention that Saturday night we also had dinner at T.G.I. Friday's.


Don't judge.