Vienna

Schonbrunn Palace

Happy Easter everyone! For the past day and a half Orry and I have been in the beautiful city of Vienna. There is a lot to do and see here and needless to say I am in history heaven.

Yesterday when we arrived here the first thing we tried to do was going to see an opera at the infamous Vienna State Opera Haus were the opera Faust was playing. Vienna being the music capital of the world, it is impossible to come here and not see an opera or some other musical act.Unfortunately standing room tickets sold out after 30 minutes or so of waiting in line. Since we got in line pretty late we are going to go a little earlier tomorrow so we can get tickets. However, there is no opera tomorrow night but a ballet to the story of Don Quixote which should be interesting. 

St. Stephan's

Although our plan for a night at the opera was foiled, we still had a lot of fun! First we walked further into the center of the city to St. Stephan's Cathedral, which from the outside is adorned with beautiful colored titles on the roof  (much like those on St. Mathias in Budapest). Unfortunately the inside of the Cathedral failed to impress us. 

The Prater Turm

After St. Stephan's we hopped on the U-Bahn to the Wurstelprater amusement park (aka Prater), which is kind of similar to Great Adventure, only a little smaller and it is free to walk around (you only need to pay for the rides). So Orry and I walked around the park to find the best ride to go on. Although the park's most well known ride is the Wiener Riesenrad, a huge ferris wheel, we bypassed this and decided to go on the Prater Turm, which is the talst swing ride in the world standing tall at 117 meters. This ride was amazing! We felt like we were flying and we had a beautiful view of the city. Honestly, we were a little scared swinging fast so high above the ground. 

Today we decided to go to Schonbrunn palace, the once summer residence to the Hapsburg royal family. I was really excited for this trip because after teaching about Schonbrunn and the wealth and power of the crown, I finally got to see the palace for myself. The inside of the palace certainly lived up to my expectations 
however, we were a little disappointed in the gardens which do not even compare to that of Versailles! 

The Great Hall, Similar to Versailles hall of mirrors, just smaller

When we arrived at the palace there was a huge line to get tickets for a tour of the palace so we decided to wait a little bit to see if the crowed would die down. In the meantime we walked around the Easter market that they had in front of the palace (which was really lame compared to the other ones that we have gone to during our trip) and then decided to walk around the gardens which is free to the public. This decision was the right one because as soon as we entered the gardens we found a ticket booth without any line! So we bypassed the large crowd and were able to enter the palace on a tour. The tour that we chose to go on covered only 40 of the 1,400 rooms in the palace. This was okay because 40 rooms was probably more than enough and we saw all the rooms that were significant in the palace. As we walked through the lavishly decorated rococo styled rooms I obtained illegally taken photos on my camera (which is not allowed) just to show you the insides of this place.

After our time at the palace we took the metro home and cooked some dinner. Now we are just hanging out in the hostel and relaxing. Tomorrow we are going to go to the Belvedere Palace which contains famous pieces of art such as Klimt's "the Kiss" and then after we will go to the Opera Haus. I hope everyone had a great Easter (and Passover). Talk to you soon.

-Melissa and Orry