Vienna

Monday August 18th

This morning I woke up this morning to Russ coming into my bottom bunk to snuggle. That cute boy :)

The hostel provided breakfast, which was fine. Then I had about a half hour to do a workout. Russ came outside with me to this grass area:

Some of the time I was doing this sprint drills and Russ just yelled out "you're frolicking in Austria!" Haha felt great. 

Soon enough the six of us were on our way to the city center. Our first stop was 

Schonbrunn, a big building and gorgeous garden area.

Look closely and you'll see Russ' leg and hand floating as he kept trying to get into my panoramic. 

There were so many beatiful flowers and lawns.

It was a little hot so we thought it was a perfect time for a cannon ball into the fountain!

You can go up and behind the main fountain, cool view! 

We ha a great view of some of the skyline from there. So far this seems like a cool city!  

I absolutely loved these long tree arch walkways, there were quite a few of them! 

Beautiful place! 

Haha Russ thought this statue had it's head in backwards...which is kind of true since it was two faced, Voldemort style.

Next up was lunch. The boys have been dying for schnitzel. Specifically from this one restaurant that missionaries apparently always go to, they call it "Herb's" after the original owner.

It had a classic German/Austrian restaurant feel. The bar stools were hilarious!

 Schnitzel is basically a big piece of meat pounded flat, breaded & fried. They do a similar thing in Argentina, but this was slightly different. They were huge. 

Chelsie & I shared a cordon bleu version. That heaven we shared, it was massive!

Russ had the house special Wienerschnitzel, it had kraut, onions, peas, ham & curry rice. His was very tasty. 

Neither of could finish, and I only had half! 

It was good, but I'm not used to oily things quite like that, the stomach wasn't loving it later :(

We spent the afternoon seeing all the awesome buildings around Innenstadt. 

A monument for the composer Haydn.

This is the Imperial Palace:

That castle looking building is Rathaus (city hall)

It was an extremely impressive building.

The parliament building is right next to the Rathaus.

It's amazing how these huge buildings are just all over the place with unique architecture, amazing sculptures and history. We've gotten a little but spoiled seeing things like this all the time.

We went through another beautiful garden area. All so well taken care of.

This one had long rows of all different types of roses with labels of their names. There were so many! 

We saw Stephens Dome (Cathedral). This is the largest cathedral in Vienna and is also kind of known as the national church in Austria. The architecture reminded us if St. Nicoli in Hamburg.

The roof is especially interesting. Who knew the chevron pattern was in hundreds of years ago? ;)

Inside of this one was also really cool.

The organ is one of the largest in Europe. It's actually not functional but in order to fix it they would have to take it apart. They don't want to do that because they think that removing it would threaten the actual structure of the building since the organ is so big and heavy.

Tom, Chelsie, Russ and I decided to make the trek up the stairs for a view from the top of the main tower.

We're a little sore & those 343 stairs kind of hurt this time!

But as usual on this trip, the view was worth it! 

As we continued through Innenstadt I had to take a picture of these street performers. They turned a tennis racket and a shovel into their own form of electric guitars! Innovative. I can totally see my dad and brothers making something like that.

Here we have the famous Opera House of Vienna:

This church is Karl's Church. By the time we got to this one, basically our last stop in Innenstadt we were tired. There is a reflection pool in front of the church and we sat there for like an hour! Just talking, taking pictures and loving being off our feet for a minute! 

I've always wanted to wade into a public fountain or reflection pool. Seriously at temple square I'm always tempted haha. So today I finally checked that off my bucket list! Here we are:

We stepped into Karl's Church for just a quick minute. They were right in the middle of mass.

It really was a lot of fun walking around today. I spent lots of time asking Russ what words meant and practicing little phrases. Languages are so fun! 

I also loved walking and chatting with Chelsie. We reminisced about everything we did as really little kids. Some of my earliest memories are with Chels. We laughed and laughed at what each of us remembered.

After resting for a while we decided to make our way to a huge cemetery where a lot of famous composers are buried. Well turns out that we were a few minutes late and it was already closed! A few stops down was a smaller cemetery where Mozart is buried, but it was also closed! Through the gate though you can barely see the monument of his grave at the end of the lane. 

By the time we made the trek back to the city center from the cemetery it was time for food (and a bathroom!). Russ had leftovers from lunch, and I wasn't feelin great so I just had some fruit. But Logan, Liz and Chelsie had their first döners of the trip. Logan had been dying for one since his mission, so he loved it. Liz & Chelsie liked theirs too. Tom had leberkäse, which is basically a hot sandwich where the meat is like really thick balogna with cheese chunks in it. Haha if you've ever heard of a "balogna cup" that's what I thought it smelled like! 

We spent the rest of the night going back to a couple of buildings in Innenstadt that look cool at night.

It's hard to see this one but I loved how symmetrical the 2 buildings were.

The Imperial Palace looked sweet! We sat on the lawn here for quite a while. Just the 6 of us remembering old times, telling stories and laughing. We had a great day! 

Pictures don't do t justice but as we crossed a bridge back to our hostel and part of it was covered with so many giant spiderwebs!! So gross. 

That was our day in Vienna, tomorrow we visit Hallstatt!!