Vienna

On Saturday Andy volunteered to hang out with the kids for the day so that Nam and I could visit Vienna. I woke up pretty early to catch the 7 am train. The ride there was about 3 hours, putting us there around 10. We hopped on the ubahn (their version of the underground metro) from the train station and headed into the heart of the city. When we walked up the stairs from the ubahn station we were face to face with St. Stephens cathedral. We decided to check it out and I'm glad we did. It's not only beautifully detailed and elaborate on the outside, but the inside is even more so. We walked around and found that a catacomb tour was about to begin. We joined in and checked out what goes on below the church. I couldn't believe how many people have been buried down there. They had rooms full of bones! I kept wondering if the bones from one of my past lives was down there! :) ha


After the cathedral we went to an art museum that had works of art from Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Matisse and other pretty famous artists. The biggest attraction was a painting from Monet called The Water Lily Pond. It's so amazing to me to see how big some of these paintings are. I know I'm just stating the obvious, but these artists were geniuses.

We went to a baroque style church called Karlskirche after that and took an elevator all the way to the top of the coppula. The frescos at the top were painted by an artist named Michael Rottmeyr.

Next we walked to Belvedere Plaza to check out another art museum. I was really pushing to see this museum because an artist that I've liked for years named Gustav Klimt has several paintings there, one in particular called The Kiss. The museum was out of the way and after a full day of walking, it was exhausting making our way there, but I'm so glad we did. Here's a picture of the museum...
Finally, we had to make our way back to the center of town to get some dinner and catch the ubahn to the train station. Initially we planned on getting an authentic Viennese sit-down dinner before heading out of town, but we ran out of time. Instead we hit up this "hot dog" stand!
I came home that night to see the kids fast asleep. I wonder what they were doing before they konked out!
And tonight the cloud cover that's been hanging heavy over Budapest for weeks now finally dissipated a bit to let us have this beautiful sunset.