Day 17 - Wien!! *Vienna

Saint Mhjlsieh. There was a mass going on and it seemed peaceful.
see all photos »

Vienna is such a magical city. It's filled with tons of history and yet, stays so fresh. And it's so clean! I hardly saw any litter. We started off our city tour with a trip to Saint Mlhifheih (I'm kidding, honestly, I can't remember the name of the cathedral! It started with an M. And it's really old. Does that help?) They were cleaning the outside, which they don't do very often. You can see the difference in the pictures. I've seen shots of this church before and I just thought it was made black, I didn't realize that it had once been off-white! It will look really nice when the cleaning is done (I'm guessing Merry Maids was unavailable b/c it would so be clean already - and there might be mints involved).

Street performers! They were funny.
see all photos »

We walked around and Aunt Heli pointed out places that had been bombed during WWII. If you're looking, it's really obvious because there will be an ornate building next to a very plain one (the plain one is newer). We then stopped by the famous Austrian Opera House and peaked inside. There was an enormous amount of people waiting for a tour, so we nixed that idea. We walked down the street and caught glimpses of the world renowned Lippinzaner horses. Those are the ones that you've probably seen 'dancing' to music in synchronicity. If you haven't heard of them, you should google it or check youtube because it's really incredible to see them doing things that it would be hard to train people to do.

Streets of Vienna. It's very open even when the streets are narrow.
see all photos »

The Sisi museum was our next stop. Empress Sisi married King Ferdinand when she was 16. She lead an unusual life for an Empress (excessive dieting and exercise, known to be reclusive, traveled incognito, etc.). It was fascinating to see the royal palace along with several rooms filled with china, silver and gold place settings. Tea service for 150, please! Empress Sisi was eventually assassinated via letter opener when she was around 50. Even then, she had a waist of 20 inches (I don't mean her corset waist, I mean her actual waist was 20 inches)!

Inside the opera house.
see all photos »

In front of the royal palace, there are roman ruins, they preserved during an excavation in 1991. Behind the palace, Aunt Heli pointed out the balcony that Hitler gave a speech on after he invaded Austria. I was really distracted at that point because there were really cute puppy dogs playing in the park in front of the balcony. Did I mention I miss my dogs? Cause I do. Miss them. They are super adorable.

From there we saw the Houses of Parliament and the HUGE town hall. In front of the town hall, they are in the midst of constructing tiny wooden houses. They do this each year for a large Christmas market. Supposedly, it's really pretty but I find that hard to believe. I just think they haven't seen our local Christmas market in front of the HEB, next to the Blockbuster (she says, shaking her head in shame).

Mozarts house.
see all photos »

After this we walked our the University of Vienna which Aunt Heli attended (she's actually Dr. Aunt Heli). It's a fairly new University that wasn't founded until 1365.

If that wasn't enough, we took the almost 2 hour train ride back home and she cooked us dinner. I don't know where she gets her energy. If it were me, I'd have poured some cereal and crawled into bed. Speaking of which...