A Winter's Ball

Many moons ago in a place far far away, an idea was hatched to attend a Winter Ball in Vienna.  Born over a long dinner that went long into the night, even at the time the idea seemed incredible.  Months went past, we moved in different directions and yet, despite everything the idea kept surfacing - initially as a "what if..." and then as a "maybe next winter?.." and then finally "how about January?"  

I will probably get into trouble for saying this, but there is something very charming and old-world about Vienna.  It is a city where, in order to buy gloves, you go to a 'Glove Shop' where they expertly size your hands and offer you a selection of gloves to try from behind the counter.  It is a city where the Danube waltz is played on the radio at midnight on New Years Eve and everyone dances and a city which still has a Ball Season.  Most weekends in January and February you can attend a Ball.  And so we did.

 It was an amazing evening.  We danced long into the night, rather poorly for Viennese standards, but we all had a lot of fun and really I think there is almost no better place to have a Ball than the Hofburg Palace. Dreams of being a Princess in the 1800s were not that hard to conjure up - especially when walking up the entrance stairs.  These pictures really only give you a taste of the almost 13 rooms (4 orchestras and 1 Disco) from the old Imperial Palace that were open for the night. 

All the pictures from the Ball were taken with my little point-and-shoot camera.  I spent a bit of time trying to remove the red eyes although I realise now (thanks Matthias!) that we've all been left in a True-Blood trance-like state.  If anyone knows of a good way to remove red-eye without rendering everyone into Zoombies, I'd love to hear!