Vienna, Austria

This past weekend we went to Vienna. I can't really explain why I liked it so much, but it was one of the best cities I've been to. There were a lot of neat buildings, a clean city, a lot of open/green space even in the heart of the city and just an all around good atmosphere.

This is the Stephansdom. Saturday night I went to a really nice advent/Christmas concert inside the church that was put on by a few members of the city orchestra.

Downtown Vienna at night.

Schönbrunn Palace - built around 1700.

This was just the front of a huge complex called the Hofburg Imperial Palace. Part of the complex is used by the Spanish Riding School (Lipizzaner Stallions) and is also the home of the President of Austria. Marie Antoinette was born here.This is the home of the President and where Marie Antoinette was born.

Town hall. This reminds me a lot of the town hall in Munich.

Botanical Garden/park that would be really impressive in the summer, but was pretty bland in the winter!

Parliament building. The 2nd picture is showing the same place in 1918 (the end of WWI).

A statue of Mozart followed by the operahouses and theaters.

I went to see the Lipizzaner Stallions perform in the morning. I don't think I really remember seeing them when my grandparents took me when I was about 5, but I always looked at the program they got from that show when I visited them and have always wanted to go see a performance ever since.

This link is a video of an example of what they do. Pretty impressive.

http://www.spanishridingschool.com/video/index.html

They don't let you take pictures during the performance, but this is the building they perform in.

And of course the blog wouldn't be complete without a picture of my favorite traveling buddy. This is in the hotel and as you can tell, he made himself plenty comfortable on my pillow. His frog goes everywhere with him too. It was his very first toy and he can hardly go to sleep without it.