Aug 4, 2009

Vienna, Austria (day 1)

We arrived in Vienna, Austria Thursday night and made our way through the streets. Even though I had walking directions written down to our hotel, we still managed to walk around for a good 20 minutes before finding it! For those who don't know, most of Europe hasn't jumped on the air-conditioner band wagon yet and it just so happens that Austria was going to be nice and steamy our entire stay. Our hotel room was the biggest yet, but that just gave more space for the hot air to stay!

Friday morning we woke up and began to explore. We started off just walking down the street knowing we would run into plenty of massive, detailed buildings. The first was the Vienna Rathaus (City Hall). You were able to walk inside and we managed to find an area that we still aren't sure if we were allowed in there. The staircase seemed to go on forever and it was draped with a bright red carpet. We also came across this ginormous ball room that had everything trimmed in gold. Both Andrew and I's mouths dropped wide open when we peaked our heads in the door.

Once done exploring in the City Hall we walked out of the other side only to see bleachers, rows of chairs and signs saying Film Festival smacking us in the face. It seemed as though each night a different opera, orchestra, or ballet played on the very large screen that was attached to the walls of the City Hall. We then began to walk through the food booth lined side walk and noticed each booth was representing a different country. We found the United States booth and it was serving Coke, chicken wings and burgers... kind of gave us a chuckle.

From there we started walking towards the two large spires that seemed to be towering over all other building and ran into the Votivkirche (Votive Church) which is one of the most important neo-Gothic religious architectural sites in the world we later found out. The spires resembled a skeleton and the roof had numerous details from the multicolored shingles that were used.

Once leaving the church we ran into many different sites... the Parliament Building which had an incredible statue in the front, the Volksgarten which is known for its rows of roses, and the very large Imperial Palace. We were beginning to notice that almost every main attraction we went to was being renovated. This didn't do wonders for picture taking, but I guess with stuff being so old it is bound to start falling apart. By this time we were ready for a snack so we grabbed a pizza from a food booth and sat in the garden area with the Mozart statue... as we say, we ate pizza with Mozart.

Now that we have something in our stomachs we headed for the City Center to view the Stephansdom. Once again, renovation! It was still cool to see and then made our way to a few different souvenir shops to see if we could find anything good. From there we walked past the Opera House and then came across a WWII memorial. By this time our feet were sore, we were hot and completely exhausted, so we took a breather on one of the park benches!

Andrew and I ate at a little cafe and had a delicious chicken salad. We also tried one of the Austrian wines which was a Gruener Veltliner, it was very good. We walked back to the hotel for a little to rest some more and to get out of the sun.

A little later that night we went back to the City Hall (it was only a 5 minute walk) to check out the Film Festival. Friday night was the night for the Orchestra. We tried a few different Austrian beers and we also tried out a few of the different foods from different countries. We had a chicken plate from the Australian booth and a chicken plate from the China booth. Both were very delicious and left us wanting more, but knew our wallet wouldn't be very pleased with us.

We watched the orchestra for a short time and then decided it was about time to head back to the hotel for a good nights rest. We had a looooooong day ahead of us!



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