Beautiful Wien

Today started with a really good city tour beginning at the St. Stephan's Cathedral in the city-center. The old city is very small (and also easy walking distance from the hotel), so getting around is not a problem at all. The tour hit most of the historic buildings in the area, including the Parliament building, Chancellor's house, old Hapsburg palaces, etc. Also, in the middle of the city, there's an uncovered excavation of some Roman ruins... a reminder of really just how old these settlements are!

In the afternoon, I went to the Schloss Shönnbrun with Marion. That was the Hapsburg family's summer palace just outside the city. After wandering through the gardens for a couple hours, we coughed up nearly 12€ each to tour the palace. The palace was absolutely amazing inside with such a mix of styles from each of the different generations that ruled (or vacationed) there. I also began learning far too much about the Hapsburg dynasty in general--go ahead, ask me about Maria Theresa, Franz Josef or Sissi!!

The evening consisted of a Strauss & Mozart Concert in the Stadtpark. It was a very small concert with some fun musicians--you could tell that most of the audience was tourists and the musicians really had a lot of fun with that. Afterwards I went to an Australian Pub with Kim and Mackenzie and had some terrible Aussie beer... made me miss Germany and Augustiner a lot!