Vanquishing Vienna

By the time Jessica and I reached Vienna, we were tired. We had been walking so much for a week straight, but we were ready to take on the last stop of our Fall Break tour through Europe.

Eliyas, a friend from our program, also happened to be in Vienna at the same time as us so we met up with him to go exploring. We walked along the main pedestrian street in Vienna, which is lined with shops of all sorts, most of which are extremely out of our price range, but it was fun to look at nonetheless. What struck me the most was how massive all of the buildings were. They were tall and wide and super imposing. 


My favorite thing about arriving in a city later in the day is that you first get to see how it looks at night, and then when you wake up it's like you're in a whole new place again because everything looks so different. Our late night views were so impressive, that I couldn't wait for the next day.


We stopped at Cafe Sacher, home of the original Sacher Torte, which is a chocolate cake with a marmalade filling that everyone raves about. I know very limited German so I asked for a table for three, and the host proceeded to spew out sentences of German, to which I just smiled and nodded in response, muttering whatever German words of affirmation I could think of.


The Cake was 7 Euros for one slice, so we split it between the three of us. It honestly wasn't all that great, but I'm glad we tried it so I could cross it off the list. 


The next day we toured the big palace that is in Vienna, which was only a twenty minute walk from our hostel. I don't know what I was expecting, but reality definitely wasn't it. The palace itself is massive, but the grounds stretch on for ages! There's forest, a labyrinth, roman structures, fountains, greenhouses, end so so much more. We spent hours just walking around and enjoying the fresh air.



It was cool to see full-blown fall colors, because even into November, a lot of the trees in Madrid are still completely green. It's very odd. 


Here's me, gracefully waving to my subjects from the steps of my palace.


I ended up abdicating my throne so that I could head to the Vienna Opera house to try and score tickets for that evening's show. We got the inside scoop from our hostel that before every show there are a limited number of standing room only tickets that are sold for under 5 Euros. To put that into perspective, normally the cheapest seats you will be able to purchase are around 100 Euros, oftentimes way higher. 

So, we stood in line outside of the opera house 80 minutes before the show was set to start and ended up with tickets to Lohengrin, a German opera about a sister who is accused of murdering her brother, but then her magical knight appears to fight for her innocence and drama ensues. 


The venue was gorgeous, and so was the performance, even though the plot got super weird and stopped making a lot of sense after a certain point. Even so, it was so incredible to get to see a show at such a world-renowned theater.


We took it easy our last day in Vienna. It had been a long 10 days, and we wanted to be not dead when we arrived back in Madrid. I went shopping for a bit and looked around at all of the cute Christmas stores. I didn't want to walk too much because my ankle was starting to hurt really bad from walking so much on cobblestone streets for so many days in a row.

I went to a new area that I hadn't really been before except the very first night we went exploring. It was cool to see everything in the daylight. There were more beautiful buildings, interesting shops, and most importantly a gelato cafe. I treated myself to a nice cold treat on the 40 degree day, and spent the rest of my time in Vienna thinking about everything I would have to do once I got back to Madrid.



I feel so incredibly lucky to have seen three amazing countries/cities and do so much in each of them. All of the cultures were so different, but the more and more countries I go to I realize that there really are more similarities than differences. The experiences I had definitely impacted me and will continue to make me think and seek to challenge my comfort zone. But at that point, I was ready to return back to the familiarity of Spain.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bopping Around Budapest

Image
With just about 48 hours in Budapest, Jessica and I were determined to squeeze in everything we had originally planned. We arrived at about noon, and the first thing we had to do was exchange our currency to the Hungarian Forint. Hungary's currency has crazy denominations- I received bills marked as high as 10,000 and 5,000 Forints. (1 USD is equal to about 282 Hungarian Forints). Then, we were prepared to make our way to our hostel, which I 100% selected based solely on the fact that it is called The Lazy Muggle. We chucked our luggage into our room and hit the streets. We didn't stop walking until 8 hours later. The first thing we saw was the Hungarian Parliament Building. Honestly, after seeing that insanely beautiful structure, I could have contentedly left Hungary. It is so massive and intricate and each side is more beautiful than the last. As we meandered the old streets of the Pest side of Budapest, we came across an enormous train station, outside ...
Read more

Showing Off Spain

Image
With just under a month left in Madrid, one of my best friends from home, Kaleigh, came to spend a week in Spain with me. I did all of my homework ahead of time and saved up my "excused absences" for class so that I could spend the week doing fun things around the city and in Barcelona! The first thing we did once Kaleigh had gotten settled at her hostel was walk around La Puerta del Sol, the main plaza in Madrid. It is all decorated for Christmas right now, which means it is busier than ever. We got Chocolate con Porras (a better version of Churros) at Chocolateria San Gines, a famous spot in Madrid that only serves churros/porras with chocolate and is open 24/7. That night we went out to El Tigre for drinks that come with a huge plate of tapas, which was our dinner. We met up with some of my friends from the program and went around to different spots in the Chueca neighborhood, ending up at a rock music bar called Space Monkey, before calling it a day. T...
Read more

Packing up for Paris

Image
My friend Jessica's one goal while in Europe was to visit Paris. Because I'm super thrifty when booking trips and have not spent too much money since I have been here, I was able to fit in this trip as well and go with her. At this point, I do wish I was spending more time in Madrid, but I will have basically a whole 5 weeks in Madrid after this trip so it isn't too bad.  We got into Paris late Thursday night and arrived at our Airbnb which was in the 20th arrondissement of the city and was also home to a grey cat. I was excited to have something to pet again, but turns out cat allergies don't disappear just because you want an animal to love in place of your dogs at home and I ended up feeling pretty crappy all weekend and am still sick a week later :(  We had a lot to get done in a short amount of time, so we took to the streets early Friday morning and saw all the sights. We made our way past Bastille, along the river to the island that houses Notre ...
Read more