Advertisement
Published: July 24th 2006
Edit Blog Post
international film festival
here's a picture of the screen in front of the city hall not only from a great billy joel song, but also featured as a slogan on their tourism booklet. how cool is that?
so yes- my group and i went to vienna this weekend. it was hot, we were sweaty and water cost us a small fortune. but of course more importantly, we had a wonderful time!
we left friday morning- we took a train that left at 10:00 and was about 4.5 hours. we had a lot of fun on the train-- since there were 6 of us, we filled up one of the compartments and so we felt nice and comfortable. the train ride was nice and scenic-- there were huge fields of sunflowers everywhere! i had no idea they grew so many here- i really wanted to be able to take some home with me. i'm not sure i had never seen so many before- absolutely gorgeous.
after getting into the train station and finally figuring out we wanted to get transportation passes instead of taking a taxi, we arrived at our hotel about an hour later. we knew we were going to be staying in a 2 star hotel, but it was actually a lot
in front of the art museums
they had these fun sculpture things that people like to sit on/in-- they look like lips to me better than what i had been picturing. we had 2 triple rooms. each room had 3 beds (2 beds and a cot, actually-- i was a trooper and took the cot lol) and a bathroom. it was decent, no AC of course- but just as a place to sleep it was fine. plus we also got free breakfast there...which we much appreciated in this euro using place. (booo euro- we don't like you)
it was about 5:00 by this time, and we decided we didn't want to waste our evening by just sitting around and waiting to go exploring tomorrow. so we went out for a bite to eat, and then walked toward the center of the city. first we found the "rathaus" or city hall (see pic). while we were walking around this building, we discovered an international film festival taking place. every night they show a recorded concert or opera, etc. on this large screen that backs up on the backside of the city hall. as a part of the festival they feature all of these carts of people selling international foods. we decided to come back later that night, and ended up getting to watch part
the palace!
so this isn't the best picture we took of the palace, but it's one from my camera- i'll get better pics tomorrow :) of a traditional concert that takes place every new years eve. we felt so cultured and sophisticated! 😊
before coming back to watch the concert, we walked all around the city- discovering museums, palaces, parks and other fabulous buildings. we took hundreds of pictures- we counted this night as a great preview of what we would definitely want to hit over the next 2 days.
yesterday morning we started early- leaving the hotel at around 8:30 and ended up staying out until about 9:00. busy day!!
first we decided to take some advice that katie's uncle gave us, which was attempting to find the river front of the danube. after taking various trains, trams and buses for about 2 hours (with extra walking and fun stops along the way) we finally discovered the river, only to realize we weren't exactly sure which part of the river front we were supposed to be at to find all of the fun vendors and such. so...we took pics and dipped our feet in the river. so i can officially say i have dipped my feet in the danube- cool, huh?
after this "successful" trip, we opted to head over to the art museums. we chose to visit the leopold museum, which ended up being a good choice. the two main exhibits there were one featuring austrian artists, and another featuring works of women as they have been perceived through time. it was all very beautiful.
we were hungry at this point, and decided we would head over to that film festival area- so 2 of us had brazilian food for lunch, and 4 of us had mexican food. lol- yeah...it's just really what we were in the mood for. and it was delish.
after lunch we made a trip to the schonbrunn palace- by this point it was almost their closing time, so instead of taking a tour of the inside we toured the gardens outside. what wonderful views! we were awesome and decided to hike up this hill where we could get the best view- it was probably the highlight of the day, being able to see the entire city spread out before us.
at this point pretty much all of the museums and stuff were closing, so we decided this would be the perfect opportunity to search out the hotel sachre, home of the sachre tort-- the world famous cake everyone had been telling us we needed to try. we found the hotel, and bought 2 of the smallest rounds (9 euros a piece, mind you- but we split them) we took them to go, and sought out a place to eat dinner. we found a lovely italian cafe, and all ordered the house red wine- which i've decided i enjoy much more than pivo (sorry pivo- you are just too beer-ish for me) a great meal, and a great day with my fabulous new friends 😊
this morning we woke up a little bit later and checked out of the hotel to go do a little more sightseeing before catching our 3:30 train. we went to another art museum- the museum of modern art. it was...interesting. we definitely all enjoyed yesterday's better, but it was still nice. a huge photography exhibit, and some "fun" very modern art sculpture type of stuff. after that, we headed off to find another palace- which was nice, though not as beautiful as yesterday's. we left shortly after for the train station and spent a little while there just relaxing after being busy bees for the past 48 hours.
what a great trip! we felt so incredibly independent and self-sufficient- planning our entire trip, deciding what we wanted to do- and attempting to do it.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.077s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 5; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0406s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
PragueBlog
Katie
The Lips Picture
You had to post that not-so-modest picture of me on your blog for the world to see? (PS- That's OK, though, I posted the picture of you sleeping on my blog!)