Friday, October 19, 2012

Viennese Waltz

So I got a little behind in posting . . . But here are Europe pictures to make up for it!
We spent the first 5 days in Vienna, Austria in this lovely apartment:


I felt like a local every morning as we bought a croissant on the way to the city center. We honestly found so much to see that we forgot about some of the activities on our must do list, i.e watch the Spanish Riding School morning practice . . . which means, of course, that we will have to return someday.

I could give you a play by play of each day, centered around my meals, since that is how I organize my days, but I'll restrain myself to the highlights.


Schonbrunn, the Versailles of the Hapsburgs and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This palace's history focuses on Empress Maria Therese who was a baby making genius and married her children off to all the European royal families.


Melk Abbey. It's yellow (pretty) and has bunches of libraries. Check out all the creepy baby heads. Similar to this statue in Vienna, which was erected in thanks to God after the plague. The plague of creepy babies.


I was going to add a picture of food here to make fun of my obsession with dining, planning, discussing, and eating food, but I don't have any food pictures from Vienna. I'll make up for it with a detailed breakdown of Austrian libations in my next post.


Bratislava, Slovakia. Another country checked off! Fittingly, it was raining and gray the day we explored Bratislava. The old town was quite quaint but thankfully I saw plenty of dreary communist architecture and crass post-communist commercialism! (seriously, I love that dichotomy)

Danube River Cruise
Time to make broad sweeping generalizations about cultures and peoples: Vienna was like a more laid back Germany. Everything was clean, professional, and on time. Almost everyone spoke English or attempted to understand our broken German. And Vienna is a big city, so it was multicultural and diverse. I loved it, and I was exhausted from so much fun by the time we left for Salzburg! Which you get to see in my next blog post . . .