Spring Break 3

Sorry for the delay. (kind of forgot about the blog.... :-/)

Tuesday, 30 March 2010 Day 5: Vienna

We got up at 8:00 am this morning to a beautifully warm and sunny day—only needed a sweatshirt! We walked to Bellevedre, a huge estate near our hotel built by Prince Eugene. It’s two giant palace-type buildings and a large lawn and garden with lots of fountains. Very pretty. Then we walked to Liberation fountain built by the soviets after World War II to commemorate the Germans being removed from Vienna. From there we walked to Karlskirche, Charles’s Church. It was built to commemorate Vienna being delivered from the plague and named after St. Charles Bartolomeo to the patron saint against the plague.

After the church we went to the History museum. We received a history lesson of Vienna from 500 B.C. to present day. Vienna was ruled by Vienna’s history is quite interesting and the museum was quick and painless. Included in the ticket was entrance to an exhibition on art created by the mentally ill. Vienna was the birthplace of modern psychiatry, and famous Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Many of Europe’s mentally ill came to Vienna to be treated in the state of the art facilities and by the best psychiatrists of the time. I learned a lot and enjoyed it very much. Well worth the 3 euro student price.

After the museum we went to get lunch at a restaurant famous for its southern Austrian cuisine, which is extremely similar to Italian cooking—a lot of pasta! I had a delicious zucchini soup followed by a type of free form pasta with bacon and spices and herbs. Nic got chicken and potatoes and veggies with a sauerkraut salad to begin with. To drink we ordered Riesling for which Vienna is known. In fact, Vienna in German is Wien, which is also the word for wine! Everything we had was very good. Lunch was followed by relaxing in the park with some chocolate and laying in the sun in Stadtpark.

After the park we ran past Stephensdom, a huge Cathedral in the middle of the city (Unfortunately under renovation like almost every major attraction we have gone to see. Thanks off-season!). Then we went past the canal and since it was such a nice day we walked to the palace and town hall, Rathauskeller, to take pictures. Then we came walked back to the hotel, picked up some souvenirs along the way, and relaxed before dinner just down the street. I had more goulash! And Nic got Weiner schnitzel. Not as good as lunch but still good. Finally we ran past McDonald’s to use the free wifi but my computer was almost out of battery and neither umail nor gmail would work, just facebook. Tomorrow is another busy day of museums and the castle!

Thursday 31 March 2010, Day 6: Vienna

Today was not the most beautiful of days… We woke up to 40-degree weather and rain. L So we got to sleep in a little bit to wait it out. After the rain calmed down a little bit we went to the Palace two metro stops outside the city, Schloss Shönbrunn. The castle was a bit expensive, but because there were still some rain showers, we decided to go in. There we learned even more about the history of Austria and its royal family. After the tour of the palace the rain had stopped and we walked through the gardens of the palace but they were not nearly as pretty as they would be in the summer because there were no leaves or flowers. The statues and fountains were still pretty though!

After deciding it wasn’t worth the cold to take pictures of pathways lined with dead trees, we took the metro back to the center of the city. There, we went to the Rathaus, Town hall and the Museum of Natural History, voted one of the top ten museums in the world in 2001. For lunch between the two stops we went to a completely deserted restaurant and ordered some chicken cordon bleu (the only thing we could recognize!) expecting a medium-sized plate. What we got were two huge chicken breasts pounded out to the size of dinner places! It was a ton of food! And good too! In the Museum of natural history we saw some really cool exhibits about the earth and how it was formed. There was a chunk of gold that weight nearly 700kg, some huge diamonds, meteors and a 25,000-year-old rock figure of a woman.

We then walked to a café to eat some cakes traditional of Vienna, sachertorte, a chocolate cake with an apricot jam layer, and SCHOIUWEPWIER, a white chocolate and dark chocolate cake mix. I preferred the sachertorte. And there was also Internet at the café! Sent a few emails and checked facebook! We weren’t too hungry for dinner after the large lunch and desserts so we got hot dogs from a street vender. Mine was disgusting! It had like a cheese or mayonnaise in the wiener. I did not like it. But then we came back to the hotel and caught up on the world news with the BBC and CNN International (the only two channels in English).

Tomorrow is Salzburg and then to Munich that evening!