Well now that I've been back a week, I suppose it is time to fill you in on our time in Austria! As you can imagine, Austria in January is not exactly warm--which will be verified for you if you look at the photos (of which there are many).
Our first afternoon in Vienna began rather predictable with coffee. My plane left Seattle at 1:30pm local time and connected through Amsterdam so I actually landed in Vienna before midnight of the day I left. Daniel had a little more overlap with normal sleeping time, but coffee was definitely still necessary.
If you couldn't tell from my written words how excited we were for coffee/caffiene.
After fortification in the form of coffee, we set off to the city center to take in some of the sights. Our first stop was St. Stephen's Cathedral in the middle of downtown and we stopped to take some photos outside and then also a few inside.
This is the Cathedral of St. Stephen, the most famous Cathedral in the city. And it was cold.
I don't remember seeing nativity scenes in other cathedrals in Europe but it seems to be a thing in Austria. And then we found the most lovely gingerbread house nativity scene! Nativity scenes in spades in Austria,
Then we stopped by the house that Mozart lived in while he was in Vienna. It's a museum and you could go in, but we decided that it wasn't necessarily worth it and to continue on with our walking.
When walking back by St. Stephen's we noticed the lovely tiling on the roof--its beautiful! We also stumbled upon a nice costume shop full of all the masks of both your dreams and nightmares. The city also still had many of the Christmas decorations up in the street--it looked so cool.
Next church on our tour: St. Peter's. Another beauty with a nicely painted rotunda and lovely details.
We walked around the "ring" which is a collection of streets that used to form a barrier around the Innerstadt, which is the city center. Along the way, we stumbled upon even more fabulous buildings. I wish I could say I remembered which one this was...
Back to the fancy streets. And if you'll note, this chandelier normally hangs straight down but was billowing in the wind. This definitely contributed to us being more cold. But eventually we made it to the Rathaus, the old town hall. It was all lit up like a Christmas tree and was very striking in the darkness of night.
Content with the beginning of our sight-seeing, we then decided it was time for food. We stopped at a traditional pub for some wursts and then walked back to St. Stephen's for some wienerschnitzel and gulash (not pictured).
It was a new dawn for Saturday and we accomplished a lot! Instead of taking the metro to the city center like we did the night before, we decided to walk our way in. Our target destination: the Naschmarket, a long-standing collection of farmers market and restaurants on one of the main streets.
More decorations! And then little cats along the pedestrian street. And you know me, I couldn't resist sitting on them. I'm pretty sure everyone was staring at me but I have no shame :)
The picture on the right is of the aquarium but I was intrigued by the quote at the top of the building. The building was built during WWII and now serves as a memorial against war and fascism. Then we have gluhwein! Which is hot wine. Which is wonderful when its very cold outside. Or which is probably wonderful any time of year.
Our hands and bellies greatly enjoyed the gluhwein! And we also enjoyed looking at all the produce, spices, and oils.
We made our way back to Rathaus, the old town hall, to see what it looked like during day and investigate the ice skating rink. It appears we had just missed the Christmas markets (huge bummer) but we did get to watch people ice skate. Fortunately (or unfortunately?) we didn't see anyone take a spill.
Our walking continued and we found the Lichtenstein embassy, a horse-drawn carriage, and lots of flags outside one of the buildings of the Hofburg palace.
But my main interest for the day was seeing the Prince's Room in the great library. And let me tell you it did not disappoint. I felt like Belle in the Beauty in the Beast. All I wanted to do was climb one of the ladders and skim through all the books but apparently that is frowned upon. And I'm sure these aren't exactly books I want to read anyway.
They had a cool collection of globes--not all of which were actually maps, a stunning painting that reminded me of the Sistine Chapel, and tons of statues that we obviously had to pose like.
Even if you don't like books, I feel like this would still be pretty spectacular.
I mean just look at it!!!
Because we were surrounded by all the beautiful buildings (history museums) we decided that we should take some more pictures although we didn't go into any more buildings at this point.
Here is one of the history museums, then we have the modern art museum, and some representative local art?
All this walking worked up an appetite so we decided burgers it was. It was quite tasty. And made me check my math because the menu said the patties were 250g which I immediately thought was a quarter pounder because that makes sense. Then when it was delivered I realized it's grams--and that means this patty was over half a pound. But don't worry, that didn't discourage me. I ate the entire thing.
Fortified by food, we trekked it out to the Schonbrunn Palace, home of the Hapsburgs Monarchy: including Maria Theresa and her 16 children (bless her heart).
Pictures were not explicitly allowed? Perhaps just ones with flash? So I took more than a couple. Of their drawing rooms, offices, and this replica of a woman with a serious head of hair. I really hope they had extensions back in the day because 1. that looks really heavy and 2. I can't even imagine having to take care of that amount of hair. But this also makes a lot of sense for why they went with the beehive hairstyle back in the day.
Here we have the mother and father: Maria Theresa and her hubby--I can't remember his name because apparently its a woman's world and she was the important one. We have a nice clock (also like Beauty and the Beast... maybe this story was based on Austria!) and the ultimate in bedside breakfast service.
Next we have a fabulous dining room with all the dishes and silverware you could ever want or need. Followed by the entertainment room where a 6 year old Mozart performed for the Queen. 6 years old and already a prodigy! What am I doing with my life? Definitely not having lots of balls in this amazing ballroom.
Here we have some more rooms. Each identified by their color/theme. I can't remember exactly but hey, they're pretty right?
We have another parlor and then photos of all of Maria Theresa's children. They pretty much all look the same... and I took a close up of Marie Antoniette because I didn't know she was Austrian and she's pretty infamous.
Then fun in the giftshop. Everyone needs a pair of lion ear muffs. Had to get those ears warm before stepping outside to look at the gardens.
We got in some more great photos of the back of the palace, this building on the palace grounds that gave us the higher ground to be able to see Vienna behind the palace.
It was quite pretty but also a bit icy up there but I managed to stay on my feet.
The only thing that can follow an ornate palace is a visit to Schomberger wines--which are sparkling--which is my favorite. We sampled a few different wines: blanc de noir, rose, and bruts.
Daniel also inspired us to take a glass with us since he had bought some wine at the store and we needed something to drink it out of. That's called resourcefulness.
We also had dinner at a nice Italian place which capped off our evening perfectly. We also sampled a bit of the Vienna nightlife (shown in the picture above on the right). It was a good end to our last full day in Vienna before we drove through the Alps to Salzburg on Sunday.
