On Friday, I arrived back at Salem from one of the most amazing experiences of my life. For eight days, Vienna and Prague were all mine to discover. Sitting down to write this post, I'm still relatively speechless. Hopefully, this was not my last trip to these two beautiful cities.
Note: This post is about to be extremely picture-heavy. I know that my photographs won't portray these cities nearly as beautiful as seeing them in person does, but nevertheless, I hope you enjoy them.
Our first, and longest, stop on the trip was to Vienna, Austria. We boarded a 9-hour flight in Charlotte towards Munich, and from there took another 35-minute puddle jumper ride to Vienna. I've flown internationally before (to Canada) but never that long. It was an experience in itself. Props to anyone who flies that distance in a regular basis. The jet lag was real.
We wasted absolutely no time upon our arrival in Vienna. After dropping off luggage in hotel rooms, we hit the ground running. Luckily, there were a few hours of sunlight left, so a fellow traveller and I did some exploring in the streets behind the hotel.
The architecture and individuality of every squished-together building in Vienna instantly blew me alway. Take a look at this amazing, hand-painted building we found about five minutes from the hotel. The way the sunlight hit it in person made it look marbleized. So cool.
That night, we headed on the U-Bahn towards St. Stephen's Cathedral. Little did we know we'd be walking past this incredible building -- and seeing it from pretty much any point in the city -- a whole lot throughout the next five days. Even though it was dark outside by the time we were able to make it inside, the view was still incredible.
Every square inch of the Cathedral pays so much attention to detail. Turn a corner and there are countless statues carved into grandiose arches and columns. I count this as an amazing first "real" experience in Vienna. It was truly breathtaking. Unfortunately, my pictures don't do this justice at all. Sad face.
Our next venture in the city was to the ever-so-lovely Belvedere. It was our first museum experience. Even the walk to the palace was beautiful, to say the least. Again, the architecture was phenomenal. It just reminds me of how young the United States is. A lot of these buildings have been standing for over five hundred years. I wonder if the locals appreciate how beautiful their city is...
Even more enjoyable than the outside of the Belvedere was the inside. The world's largest collection of my favorite artist, Gustav Klimt, is stored in the Upper Belvedere. Getting to see his works in person was easily one of my favorite aspects of the trip. His most famous work, The Kiss, is displayed on its own wall... I could've stared at it forever. Of course, there were countless other artists featured throughout the museum. We couldn't take pictures of the actual works of course, but I have 30+ images of their descriptions to look up later.
As a Political Science major, I took particular interest in walking down streets of embassies. A few of us were taking note of particular flags and plaques recognizing countries both inside and out of the European Union. The most moving to walk by, of course, was the French Embassy. On the sidewalk just outside was a memorial for the twelve victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. A surprising number of contributions were in English.
We visited another architectural and artistic masterpiece, St. Charles Church. Yet another example of the attention to detail and time spent on making these buildings as beautiful as possible. There are some renovations happening, so I got as many pictures as possible without including scaffolding and temporary staircases.
I'm still amazed at the fact that every inch of artwork throughout this church was painted by hand over such a long period of time. So much appreciation for the countless hours spent by anonymous artists to make St. Charles -- and every other beautiful sight in Vienna -- such a unique, breathtaking sight.
So, it turns out that I'm going to be splitting this into several parts. If I were to continue adding pictures to this post, it would become unfortunately long and I'm almost positive that you would skip most of it... and I'm barely half-way through my Vienna experience... and we still have Prague to talk about!
Fear not, Part 2 has already gone live! CLICK HERE to jump to the next post.
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