We (there were three of us in the group) got to Vienna a little after Noon on Friday. It was about a 3 hour train ride from Salzaburg. We had the compartment (they have individual compartments on most trains here) to ourselves for most of the trip, which was nice.
Anyway, first thing we did after going to the hostel, checking in, and taking a much-needed nap (no one slept much the night before) was to head to the very center of the city, and St. Stephen's Cathedral.
The church is gorgeous, both inside and out.
So, after St. Stephens, we just wandered around the city for a while, seeing the sights, and getting lost. Why the group trusted me with the map, I have no idea.
This is the Hofburg Palace, the winter residence of the Habsburgs, who ruled Austria for centuries. Unfortunately for us, we thought it was the Austrian Parliament.
This is the real Parliament.
Saturday, we spent most of the day at Schonbrunn Palace, which was the summer residence of the Habsburgs.
The place is huge! There's over a thousand rooms in the palace, but only 40 of them are open to the public (no cameras allowed inside, though).
After touring the palace building itself, we toured the palace gardens, which feature a massive hedge maze (which I foolishly decided to try out. Got lost in there for a while), as well as a massive structure-which we have no idea what it is-up on a hill overlooking the city. Honestly, we were there all day, and we didn't see even half of what there is to see on the property.
After Schonbrunn, we toured the Museum of Applied Art for a few minutes (again, no pics of the inside) before racing to some markets to pick up food for our trip home (as none of the food stores open on Sunday.)
Sunday, we started off by finding St. Peter's Church (getting ourselves good and lost along the way). We finally found it around noon.
(Picture courtesy of Wikipedia since mine didn't turn out so good)
The inside is, like St. Stephen's, absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, it is rather dark inside the church, and they do not permit the use of flash photography, so all of my pictures turned out badly. One kind of creepy thing is that the bodies (skeletons, really) of two martyrs from Rome that are on display in glass coffins on the sides of the church. Kinda gross, if you ask me.
After that, we toured the House of Music. Very Cool. The first floor is a display about the history of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Then, from the second floor up, there are a multitude of displays describing how our mind processes sound and how we can be tricked via various auditory illusions. Then there was a history of music, leading from the classical composers of Mozart's era up through the present day and even into the future. My only regret was, again, that I neglected to take any pictures.
Finally, since we had about three hours to kill before our train left, we wandered the city again, going first to St. Stephen's again, then back to St. Peter's, before finally arriving at Votivkirche. I have pictures, but they were all taken with the camera turned horizontally to get the entirety of the church's twin steeples in view, and I don't know how to rotate them. I'll post pics if/when I do.
After Votivkirche, we wandered the city for another hour or so before heading back the hostel, checking out, and then catching the train home. When we made our reservations, we accidentally upgraded ourselves from the standard InterCity train to one of the new high-speed RailJet trains (only cost us 10 Euro, so we didn't mind). We made it home in just over two hours after hitting a top speed of 200 kph (~125mph), which we sustained for about half the journey. Got in just after nine thirty at night (the train was 20 minutes late, surprisingly), made it to Haus Wartenberg by about ten.
So, that was last weekend. Have to say that I had a blast.
Next weekend looks like Prague. I'll let y'all know how that turns out. Until then, peace.
-Raptor
