We got up so early for the train, plus my mom was jet lagged from the 6 hour time difference so when we finally got there we were so exhausted. After riding the tram successfully without tickets (whoops) we got to our hotel
We went for lunch at a really nice place down the street from our hotel. Paying in Euros is a lot different than paying in Czech Korunas, much more expensive.. but the food was still good!
We decided to go and explore the city later that evening and it was so beautiful with the lights illuminating the buildings. Our hotel was located right down the street from the Opera House.
Vienna had special areas just for pedestrians and it was really nice to just walk on at night.
Because Vienna is actually called Wien in this side of the European world, everything said Wiener on it, which made the trip much funnier.
The next day we actually went to Budapest but I'm going to make a separate post on that trip.
We got back from Hungary on saturday night and then on sunday we decided to do a Hop on Hop off bus tour of the city, which was really nice because we could pick and choose which things we wanted to see.
First we went to the Schönbrunn Palace, which was the palace of the Hapsburg empire, rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (One of the Hapsburg's offspring was the well-known Marie Antoinette). The palace which has 1,400 rooms used to be their summer home and apparently the gardens are really beautiful in the spring. It was so huge, I was completely blown away!
It was sunny but really windy! So it was a bit chilly.
The Gloriette structure was at the top of a really huge hill in the back of the Palace but was worth climbing up because of the view we got!
Even though it was winter, the gardens were still really nice and there were a lot of runners going in and out of the shrubbery. It appeared that in the spring the bushes would be impossible to see through and the entire yard would form a giant maze! We came across a giant bird cage with homing pigeons.
The huge backyard also had statues and fountains all over the place, it was huge!
We left the palace and then went to the Belvedere Palace which was built for Prince Eugene of Savoy. The Palace started to be built in 1717 for the Prince who loved to scare his guests by bringing out his pet lion. Currently, the Belvedere is an art museum and we went specifically to see the world's largest Gustav Klimt collection (an artist I really like) and here they had his most famous piece, The Kiss.
After the Belvedere we decided to just stay on the bus for the rest of the hour tour of the city. We saw so many old buildings like the Parliament
The Hofburg Palace, which used to house the Hapsburg Dynasty. It now is the official seat of the Austrian Federal President.
To finish up this entry, Vienna had some really cool roof tiles, the horses wore earmuffs and the signs were hysterical.
Vienna was expensive and beautiful, but not as beautiful as Prague!
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