Today was a pretty relaxed day. We started with a walking tour through Vienna with our guide Manuela (spell check). Just in a few hours we saw so much! The city is similar to New York City. The outskirts are less wealthy, and as you continue to walked towards the city center it gets more expensive.
Our tour began at the Monument of Mother Teresa and the Square where her monument is. On each side of the monument was a museum: one for natural history and one for fine arts. Some things I picked up about Mother Teresa were that she had sixteen kids! One of them being Marie Antionette. There was a really cute guitar player sitting at the bottom of the monument and he played "O Suzanna" for us.
Our guide also explained a lot about Austria's history while were were at the Mother Teresa Monument. Back in the 16th century, Vienna was the capital of three empires (Rome, Austrian, and Austrain-Hungary). It was called the empire where the sun never goes down because it was such a large area of space.
As we continued to walk, we came upon a very large castle (pictured blow) where Mother Teresa lived, and also where the Hapsburg dynasty used to rule and live which was called Complex Palace of Hapsburg. The Hapsburg name has played a very crucial role in history, for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand is what sparked World War I. Complex Palace was beautiful. Horse drawn carriages, live music, people dressed up. It was such a great cultural experience!
It was so crazy - as we were walking from the Complex Palace we ran into a tour group of older people that are from Maryville! Of course we stopped for a picture and chanted B-E-A-R, C-A-T-S! Small world!
But after Complex Palace and our run in with the "townies", we headed to the most expensive street in Vienna called Ring Street (pictured below). And it was GORGEOUS! We learned that Vienna is the second most expensive city behind Luxembourg! But everything was very much out of my price range personally! Stores such as Gucci, Versace, Tiffany and Co, Louis Vitton, etc.
We all then were turned loose into a marketplace to grab some lunch and do some shopping. Which was so fun - there was an Indian section of the marketplace so a lot of bright colors and fun little gifts! And a LOT of fresh fruits, veggies, and a lot of other fun stuff!
I could go on and on and on about today! We saw so much in such a short amount of time, but Vienna is beautiful! So far, I think we have all fallen in love with Vienna pretty quick and can't wait to see what the rest of our time here brings!
XOXO
Team Wanderlust
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