The Perfect Day in Vienna

My friend Anna, my cousin Hayden (who is studying abroad for a semester in France), and myself had the most perfect day in Vienna 2 weekends ago. (sorry it took me some time to write about the update) It started off a little bit stressful because we nearly missed our train from Munich. But because we are such fast runners, we made it with 3 minutes to spare! After a 4 and a half hour train ride on Friday night, we were there, in the beautiful capital city of Austria! Friday night we saw the night life and then Saturday we explored the city!

In front of St. Charles's Church.

Inside St. Stephan's Church in the City Center. It was so sweet, there was a school orchestra playing when we were in there.

We looked forward all day to our midday break because we knew we were going to Sacher. It's a fancy hotel and restaraunt that apparently has the best chocolate cake in the world. It's been this secret recipie since the 1800s. Mmm it was so good!

 

Us at Hofburg Palace. This is apparently where the President lives! It didn't have security like the White House does. This area, it's close to the Rathaus and the Parliament building, is where most of the government action goes down.  And this was where the beautiful Empress Sisi lived. She had a typical fairly tale story. She was from a royal family in Bavaria, met the Emporer of Austria- Hungry and he fell madly in love with her at first sight. Everyone still knows who she is and her romantic story (even though she was murdered). She is still a historical icon here.

This is us goofing off in front of the Parliament house :)

One of my favorite things about exploring a new city is the random things you come across that you weren't expecting. As we headed toward the Rathaus, we came across this bike festival. It was really cool! The riders were launching themselevs off a ramp that was set up front and center of the Rathaus. They were doing all sorts of tricks and flips. So we wondered around there and cheered on the riders for a bit. Some of these boys were crazy with the jumps they were doing. They probably make their mother's constantly worried sick haha.

We went to the Belvedere Museum in the afternoon. It has a beautiful garden that we walked through and we saw their exhibit called gold. So most everything was made out of pure gold. I didnt care too much for that art. It was too modern for me.

The day became offically perfect when we went to the Opera Saturday night. We are pretty much awesome and through our awesome connections, we got hold of some awesome seats. Even if I put 3 more awesomes in that sentence, it would not come close to describe really how awesome it was. Tickets originally costing 200 Euro were graciously given to us poor students for 15 Euro, thanks to a lovely family friend's sister who plays in the Orchestra. The Opera we saw was called L'Elisir D'Amore. It's Italian, so we had to read the translation the whole time (I managed to read it all in German). It was really good! It wasn't like a traditional stiff opera. It was funny and had a lot more acting- theater tone to it. So we were able to enjoy an absolutely lovely evening at one of the most well respected Opera houses in the world. It was just wonderful.

Saturday night we probably stayed out later than we should have because we had to catch the train to Budapest at 7am. But we made it and had a nice long nap on the train so everything was good :) We kept talking on and on about how perfect our day in Vienna was! But then we were excited to see Budapest next! I'll try to write that blog and put all my pictures up on facebook tomorrow!