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Published: July 25th 2012
I love Austria! I can basically sum up our Austrian experience as: palace, apple streusel, film festival, palace, Wiener schnitzel, opera, palace, church, fortress, sound of music, Mozart, palace, church, chocolate cake. Repeat.
We took the train from Munich to Vienna and arrived sometime in the early afternoon. Our hotel was nicely located about a 10 minute walk from the West Wien station (main centralish station), so it was quick to get to and check in. The weather was beautiful and it wasn’t long before we were learning a new city map and transit system to go find things to check out. Well good god, we got off at the Museum quarter and I almost died. This city is so damn gorgeous. There is an unreal amount of beautiful architecture, stunning statues, etc. We started with a plan to see certain things and ended up just wandering around aimlessly with our mouths dropped to the ground, starring at the endless amount of scenery, trying to soak it all in. You know how some cities have one or two awesome buildings that you have to go see, I felt like almost all of Vienna was that way. Every corner we turned
I could hear myself saying again, Oh my god, wow, I love this city, how can it be this beautiful everywhere you look! That brought me to thinking about my great great great and great x 4 grandparents on my mom’s side who’s children left Austria long ago to come to Canada. All I could think was, What were they thinking??!?!?!! Leaving this?!?!?!!! But I guess times were different then.
We walked around and saw museums quarter, the parliament building, the Vienna state opera house, Stephansdom, Volkstheater, St. Peter’s church, Rathausplatz, Theresienplatz, Heldenplatz, Stephenplatz, and more, while I got premature arthritis in my camera clicking hands (you have no idea how hard it was to pick photos for this blog). Later, as Binnson’s stomach was telling him that we must eat, we decided to look for some food. As I got distracted about 20 more times by beautiful buildings around us we stumbled upon the Film Festival. It was a huge outdoor party with tons of international food and a huge screen set up on the side of the huge old building of city hall. We wandered around all the stands before picking up a few dishes to sample.
Finally with big full stomachs, we headed back to the hotel.
The next day, we really needed to do some laundry so we located a laundry mat in what seemed like a less beautiful area... As our laundry did its thing, we walked down the road to Schonbrunn Palace and hung out in the crazy garden area while we waited. *Sigh* I love Vienna. After we picked up the laundry and took it back to the hotel, we got ready for our big date night out. It started at this huge ice cream place that we walked by a million times and it is always packed with people enjoying ice cream the size of their heads. So we got two, haha. It was SO good. Then we hopped on transit and went to an opera/classical music by Mozart and Strauss/ballet show at Auersperg Palace. It was awesome!!! We finished the night with a stroll back down to the Film Festival for more delicious food and a nice little scenic tram ride.
We decided to take a trip out to Salzburg bright and early the next morning, the land of Mozart and the Sound of Music movie. It is
a great little town and we tried our best to see as much as possible. We started off at Mirabell palace and gardens, then to Leopoldskron Palace and pond, then to Hellbrunn Palace and its trick fountains. We went on the tour at the trick fountains, we basically walked around on pins and needles around this garden waiting for the next trick fountain to go off and soak us good. The one time I tried to outsmart our tour guide from me getting wet landed me with the worst soaking yet. I felt like I literally had a shower right then and there. Luckily it was 32 degrees C out so it was actually refreshing! After getting soaked we carried on to find the gazebo from the Sound of Music on the grounds (I am sixteen, going on seventeen.....).
After grabbing some lunch and some Mozartkugeln (chocolate balls named after Mozart... tasted like chocolate balls....), we went for a walk around and took pictures of Mozart’s resisdence, Mozart statue, the Horse bath fountains, walked around inside St. Peter’s abbey and the Dom cathedral before heading up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress. We went on a tour at the fortress and
then walked around the grounds and got some awesome pictures of the entire city as it stands high above it before heading back to Vienna on the second last train home. Today we are headed to Bratislava!
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Flo
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Regards from Vienna
Hi! Great travel report! Just one little correction: The building behind the film-festival screen isn't a church, even though it looks like one... it's the city hall! ;) Regards from Vienna!