Vienna - updated

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the late post, been a little tired and sleepy lately.

Well, just came back from my trip to Vienna. It was pretty good, better then I expected. All the people there are very friendly and helpful, just like my guide book said. We left on thursday night on a night train to maximize our time there but the night train was pretty brutal. The train was broken up into compartments of 6 seats with very little room for everyone. They were also sealed off so it was really hot and stuffy and if you open the window its really noisy. Needless to say, we didn't too much sleep that night. We went a guy from Norway on the train and then meet him again at the hostel so we decided to check out some of the sites together.  


The first place we went to was Schloss Schonbrunn, the summer palace of the Habsburg family (they pretty much ruled the world back in the day). This place was huge and extremely nice. It has a bunch of pretty cool themed rooms also. 


 


 


After touring the main house we went to the backyard. It was huge, like a park. Flowers and fountains everywhere. It must suck bein the gardenner here. 


 


 


In one corner of the yard was those cool mazes made from the bushes. It was a bit embarassing as it took us a while to navigate them (i think we did every wrong turn). O well, was cool. 


The last thing we did was go to an apple struddel making demonstration. It was pretty neat and tasted quiet good. It was cool how hte dough stretches so much. 


Once we were done with the palace, we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Fine Arts. It was pretty much like every other art place but the building was nice. 


 


It had some cool artifacts as well. Doesn't this look like a holy gernade? 


The last stop of the day was a Mozart/Strauss concert/opera/ballet. It was pretty good and the musicians and opera singers were really good. 


 


The next day, we decided to go to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Military History), but before we got there, we arrived at Schloss Belvedere, so we went to check it out. We never went inside since it was just an art museum, but the garden in the front was very nice. 


 


The military museum was pretty cool and very informative. It went really far back into the past and carried on up until WWII. 


 


 


 


They also had the car the Franz Ferdinand was in went he was assassinated (and sparked the WWI) 


After that, we went to Beethoven's apartment. There wasn't much to see there but was sorta neat. Mozart's apartment was really close also, but it was closed. 


After that we just walked around town looking at some old churches and monuments. We went out for dinner after to try some traditional Vienese food. 


 


 


 


 


 


On the last day, we went to the Hofburg, which was the summer residence of the Hapsburg family. It was huge, like a small town and we check out 3 museums there. The first was the Silberkammer, which was a collection of their silverware and stuff like that. There was so many gold and silver plates and utensils, was pretty neat. They also have a famous way of folding the napkin that only 2 people in the world know how to do, pretty neat. 


 


The other museums was the Sisi museum (Empress Elizabeth) and the royal apartments. Was a lot of history there and was sorta neat to see how all the palaces i've been to thus far are all connected by a relative.

After that, we went to the Naturhistorisches Museum (museum of natural history). They had a huge display of rocks, minerals and meteorites. They also had this huge collection of dead/stuff animals, looked like every species. 


 


 


To finish off the day we just explore along the river Danube. 


 


 


We caught the night train to go home at around 9. This time we were in normal seats and the air conditioning was on, so it was much more confortable and easier to sleep. We arrived home at around 7 and went straight to work. Was pretty good and saw a lot of things, so it was pretty cool.