Prague and Vienna

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Vienna was large and beautiful. We finally met up with Brylan and Jessica our friends from Salt Lake. We stayed in a nice hotel with big down comforters which was what we were waiting for in coming to northern Europe. Vienna is a very classy city with lots of traditional Hapsburg old-style buildings. Every street is lined with new buildings that look like they are decorated with icing. The main museum area is vast and opulent with lots of gold and crowns on top of the buildings. The best part of the museum experience was getting to see a Gustav Klimt exhibit. This exhibit had the famous painting ‘The Kiss’ which was great to see in person. It is actually a pretty large painting as where many of his other landscape works which were especially mesmerizing for landscapes. We also went to a Mozart concert in a very old music hall where Mozart had performed. Of course there was some mistake with the tickets, so after moving around and trying to get things fixed at the last minute, we stumbled over three rows of box seats and sat in the front row of the box right on top of the stage. It was a great experience seeing Mozart’s music in a large hall with paintings and art from the time when he was in Vienna composing. Plus, Brylan provided entertainment by consistently nodding off during the slow numbers because he was still jet-lagged from his flight.

We then headed from Vienna to Prague for all of us to meet up with Asha and Nick. We stayed in a big and beautiful apartment. It had 3 bedrooms, each decorated in different rich vibrant colors. The ceilings were very tall and it was within walking distance from the city center. We were lucky to have Brylan and Jessica’s friends Misha and Misha to show us around town. They were great tour guides and spoke English very well because they had lived in Salt Lake for over a year. It was hilarious to have them toting around 6 crazy Americans in to their favorite local haunts. Prague is such an ornate city. The buildings are extremely detailed and demonstrate great eastern European style architecture. Many of the buildings have huge onion topped towers while there are other gothic walls and castles that look like the evil villains house from some vampire or Disney movie. The Charles bridge was one of the most beautiful bridges , despite the crowds we had to fight through to cross it. We took a boat trip down the Vlatva river with a friendly tour guide. Being with our friends was such a nice change and transition into Michael working. We are now in Amsterdam for 4 nights and then on to Belgium to meet with work people. We will add more when we can! Absinthe…whoa absinthe.

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Comments

[Ruts]

Amsterdam....whoa
I´m jealous bc I´ve been wanting to go to Vienna forever. It´s on the very long list of places. Glad you are having such a good time especially fighting off the huge crowds of tourists in Europe over the summer - same thing here in Peru. Have a blast in Amsterdam. I just met some people from Belgium and they spoke flemish - couldn´t understand a word of it! Hasta luego!