Wien Day 1

We had been planning to go to Vienna sometime soon, and finally decided to go this last Thursday. Christine, Anabel, and I took a bus there (only a 2.5 hr bus ride!) and then met up with Lisa, Chelsea, and Chelsea's mom. Since we had arrived in Vienna around 9am, we had the whole day to explore the city. We first went and checked in to our hostel (Hostel Ruthensteiner). Apparently this hostel is abnormally nice and clean relative to other hostels. I completely recommend anyone to stay here if they are visiting Vienna!

Our first destination after the hostel was Schonbrunn, the Imperial Palace of the Habsburgs. Also, I found out in my Contemporary Culture class last week that the name of the dynasty is correctly spelled "Habsburg" and not "Hapsburg", which is how I have always been taught to spell it. My professor said he thinks it's really weird that Americans are taught to spell it that way, so I've decided to start spelling it the "right" way from now on. Anyway, the palace was gorgeous, but after finding out that the entrance for a tour was almost 10 Euros (approx. $14), we decided to just wander around the gift shop and public area of the palace instead. I love going to places that embody history and historical events (yes, I am a history geek), so I completely fell in love with this palace.





After visiting the palace we grabbed lunch at a local restaurant. I had liver dumpling soup (one of my FAVES) and we all had weinerschnitzel. We then went on to our next place of interest: Palace Belvedere. Not only is this a gorgeous palace, but it is today an art museum. AND the featured artist was Gustav Klimt. So, most of his amazing artwork was up, including the famous The Kiss painting. While the guards in the room weren't looking, I even took a sneaky (though imperfect) picture of it! I also love another of his pieces, called The Maiden . His artwork was amazing.





As we left, Chelsea's mom persuaded us to go to Opera. So we went to the opera and bought standing tickets for 3 Euros to watch Giuseppe Verdi's Otello, a play based on Shakespeare's Othello. After buying the tickets, Christine convinced us to go to Cafe Sacher and try their famous chocolate torte cakes. The cafe (which is part of a hotel) is right next to the opera, and it is gorgeous! After the desserts, we went back to the opera to watch the show. Although standing for over 2 hours turning out to not be very great, the show was completely amazing. This is the first opera I have seen in a long time, and I think I have come to appreciate it much more than I did in earlier years.






After the opera, we headed back to our hostel, and then Anabel, Christine, Chelsea, and I decided to go out to the nearest pub and meet some other traveling students. We definitely met some characters: an eccentric Irish guy, a guy who also worked at our hostel (Franz!), a few French students, a very sweet girl from Vietnam, and guy from New York studying abroad in Prague.