LULU's Travel Blog: Austria (2)

"And your name is... Pascal VIENNE?", said by the hotel receptionist in Vienna (or, Vienne in French, or Wien in German). we were in the city that shares the same name with Pascal. That adds an extra stroke of interest to the city.

Vienna is a place full of history, culture, and the beauty of baroque architecture. the whole old town (or Inner Stadt) itself is a world heritage site. and it wasn't hard to understand why as soon as we set foot in it. every building and the decoration, sculptures on it seem to have a religious or mythological story to tell. and the number of museums! it's impossible to visit them all in one trip. As in many times before when we first arrived at a big city, we felt a little overwhelmed and disoriented and thought a little guidance would help. so we kicked off our stay in Vienna with a walking tour in the old town. i always love walking tours, because it quickly gives an overview of the place by an insider. After the walk we were able to narrow down a mile long list of things to a reasonable few. And experience tells us the importance of varieties. we can only visit so many museums and palaces and castles in a short amount of time, after a while they all kinda look the same. :) we visited the beautiful Stephansdom, a gothic church with beautiful tile roof and baroque interior, climbed up the tower to take in the view of the city. The next day we visited the breath-taking national library, the ceilings are decorated with impressive frescos, floor to almost ceiling collection of old books that require a ladder to access. i said jokingly that this is the kind of place Indianna Jones or Professor Robert Langdon would come to find clues to save life. :) Then we spent some time in the Kunsthistorisches Museum and got drowned in its massive collections, from egyptian art to renaissance paintings. Almost all museums in Europe provide audio guide, on which a pre-recorded commentery is played when the associated number is entered. I like it a lot because it allowed us to visit at our own pace without being rushed from room to room if we were to follow a real guide tour (a small tip: bring a pair of earphone). After taking a break to digest all the information, we headed for yet another museum - Sisi museum and the imperial apartment (where Sisi and her husband Franz Joseph lived). This beautiful empress surely lived an eccentric life. and the things she did to maintain her good look just dropped my jaw. to name a few, every morning she spent 2 hours to have her floor-length hair done(not by herself of course, she studied languages and other things while her hairdresser works on her hair), she followed strict diet such as eating raw veal meat juice squeezed from juice press. the juice press and some of her diet menu are displayed in the museum. Too bad it's in German, otherwise i could have got some diet tips from the royal family. :)

the next day we visited Scholoss Schonbrunn. it's one of the most visited places in Vienna so we got there early. But still it wasn't early enough, as we entered the palace we found ourselves sandwiched by two Japanese tour groups. The audio guide took us through rooms and rooms full of beautiful paintings, decorations, furnitures. what a lavish life style the royalty lived!

of course all these visits are spaced out by little breaks in cafes and sausage stands (as talked about in previous entry). :) at the end of the day we really felt the need to escape from the emperor and the empress and all those busy rococo ornateness so we decided to go to the architecture museum to see a modern architecture exhibit. the exhibit was interesting and all but 20 minutes later i found myself waking up on the couch in front of this interesting slideshow of modern buildings. :) i think i might have exceeded my museum quota....some pictures below:

Stephansdom