Vienna

It rained all day today. That is what I view when I think of Vienna. In my mental image of the city it is always raining, so this was typical of that. Despite this, Vienna is a beautiful city.

After driving around for a bit, the first place we went to was the Swarovski store. Swarovski crystal is from Austria and the one in Vienna is one of the largest stores in Austria. We learned some history about it and had the opportunity for shopping. There are some absolutely beautiful pieces in the store.

Brenton and I left the Swarovski store and headed off a gothic church in the center of the city. Gothic churches are really cool, but are hard to get photos inside because they are so dark. For some reason, they were charging a lot of money to go to the main park of the church so you could only walk along the outer parts of the church. It is a beautiful church though, inside and out.

After the cathedral we went over to Stadtpark. There are some amazing statues there and the most impressive one is the statue of Johann Strauss. Vienna is amazing because of its musical background so there are statues of musicians all over the place.

Lunch was really good today. I had a hot dog that was basically in a baguette that they toasted the inside of and stuck the hot dog into. It had cheese with ketchup and mustard. It was delicious.

We walked over to the statue of a Soviet soldier. It is the same time of monument that they had in Budapest with a small difference. This one is a memorial to all the Soviet soldiers that lost their lives in the liberation of Austria. This is also a controversial monument. Putin visits this monument every year, which is a big deal. 

We had another stop to look at a statue, which was the statue of Mozart. This was a really cool statue and possibly my favorite so far on this trip.

The parliament building in Vienna is gorgeous. There are a lot of ceremonial functions that happen in this building and it was definitely worth a visit. The façade on the building is very ornate.

After this we headed over to one of the palaces of the Hapsburgs. There we visited the Apartments of Empress Elizabeth I (Queen Sisi). We walked through the apartments and saw a huge collection of silver. There were lots of candelabras, place settings, and china. We didn’t get to take photos inside so there aren’t any photos of the apartments but the outside is pretty.

Next, we drove to Schönbrunn Palace, the seat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We only had 40 minutes here so there wasn’t enough time to see any of the palace but we walked around and saw the gardens which are beautiful.

After this we went to a schnapps museum. I was disappointed in it because we didn’t get to see the actual process, although it was described to us. After that we tasted different schnapps. I really liked the apple strudel one.

We returned to the campsite for dinner and after headed out to the Mozart and Strauss concert. I was expecting a different concert hall and was disappointed in the acoustics, but the music was good. The first song that was played was one that I played last year. It was by Johann Strauss, so that was cool to hear.

I was disappointed in not being able to go to the United Nations building, but at least I’ve been to the city. Tomorrow, we will be driving to Prague in the Czech Republic. It will be an exciting day.