June 7-8 Vienna, Austria

When we got to Vienna by train, we were pretty hungry but had to ditch our bags at the AirBnB. This place was significantly better than our last one in Salzburg. We had the entire apartment to ourselves. We took an Uber to a tavern which had pretty good reviews as well as vegetarian options. The tavern was a 14th century tavern and it reminded us of a mix of the movie Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean. Some live musicians came up to us and serenaded us with a rendition of Home on the Range in order to earn a tip. I didn't really like that, but the music and food was good, so what can ya do?

Dinner took a total of about two hours; the service was pretty slow. When we finally got out, it was dark but we needed food for the morning, so we tried to find the nearest grocery store before my phone died since we would also need it to order a car home. Everyone else either had a dead battery or didn't have data to order a car and get directions. I had 19% battery, so it all worked out on a prayer.

The next morning, we made an early start and headed to St. Stephens Church. It's a different name in German, but for my sake, all the names are going to be in English. The decoration on the doorjambs is reminiscent of horror vacuii, the fear of dead space.

This is the interior of the church, we were able to listen to a live confirmation mass, which was pretty cool. We got to hear people sing, which was really nice.

This is the exterior. One of the many hallmarks of Gothic art is how tall the buildings get to be. Another hallmark is the use of pointed arches. French Gothic architecture uses flying buttresses, which is unique to that area. Austrian churches have yet to use buttresses, based on my traveling.

This is the interior to St Peter's church. It was definitely more Baroque; I also think it was in the shape of a Greek cross, but I could be wrong.

As we started walking, we came across the Albertini Museum. It had a massive collection and a great price for students. Some of the girls are only 18 years old, so they were able to attend for free!

This is a beautiful Monet piece. He made really beautiful pieces; I want to do more research on him because he is just so neat. When I was looking stuff up, I read that when he died, there was a black cloth draped over his casket. One of his buddies took that off and said something along the lines of, "Even in death, Monet won't have black." Then he switched it out for a floral pattern cloth. That's the kind of guy I want to read about. 

This museum was cool because it was once a fancy home. It also just had so much art! Every where I turned, there were so many works of art. I didn't think it would end!

Kaitlyn and I broke away from the group during lunch to head over to the Belvedere Palace, Museum, & Gardens when we saw this fountain and my hair started doing a Weird ThingTM.

The Belvedere complex is absolutely massive! It is kind of like an Austrian Versailles. Here's just a piece of the garden and I'm in the middle of it.

The permanent collection had a lot of great pieces. This is another landscape by Monet. He used darker colors to make shadows, instead of black. Isn't it beautiful?

Monet didn't do a lot of portraits, but this is a chef who's food he really liked. What a gift. The hardest part about capturing pictures in a museum is how the reflections catch on the glass. 

I was so tired and needed a place to sit down. I told myself that the next bench I saw, I would sit down, no matter what art was in front of it. I sat down and started looking around when I realized that directly in front of me was Napoleon Bonaparte Crossing the Alps by Jacque-Louis David. My friends caught up to me and went down the rabbit hole of wanting to hear more about Napoleon. I gave an entire semester's worth of knowledge within a five minute period. They asked for it.

I sent this picture to my professor who loves Napoleon.

The columns were super cool in this building.

This is a popular painting called The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. In my opinion, he is a little overrated, but what can you do?

A pic of me and Kaitlyn.

After seeing almost three churches and two massive museums, we just wanted to go back home. In order to save money, we bought groceries and made dinner at the AirBnB. Here's Sierra holding all the groceries. Don't worry, we helped carry them home as well as try to make pasta. She did the bulk of the work. Thanks, girl!

You might notice the caprese salad. I hope I never eat another one for the rest of my summer because I've never been more fed up with a specific food in my entire life.