A Saturday Morning in Vienna
On Saturday morning, I headed downtown to the plaza in front of City Hall (Rathaus Platz) for Masters 2013 – an international horse show. Entrance was free from 8am – 2pm, and so I took advantage of that to have fun with my camera for a couple of hours during the Bronze Tour showjumping. It was interesting watching all the riders with their coaches in the ring pacing the jumps on foot before the start of the competition. I particularly enjoyed watching a little dog doing the rounds – sometimes with his masters and sometimes on his own.
I really felt for those riders who came from afar and were eliminated within the first few seconds because their horse refused a jump a couple of times or knocked down too many gates. What surprised me the most is that the fastest horse there (while I was there anyway) who also cleared all the jumps without a penalty actually looked like a small painted pony – the whole crowd commented on how cute and small it was when it came out. What pep!
I then headed towards the Art History Museum to practice drawing for 1.5 hours, but first I walked through the Sports Day festival in Heldenplatz. A good morning.
I remember going to the Spruce Meadows Master’s in Calgary with you, Alana and her kids. Good times!
I watched a woman and her horse from Calgary here on the live TV Masters 2013 recording on Sunday doing dressage (horse dancing) – it was beautiful!