Travels Revisited: Austria 2014

The travel blog has moved! Before departing on another U.S. road trip, I wanted to upgrade the look of the blog.

I wanted to take a look back at some of my firsts blog posts and share them on my new site.

July 9th, 2014- This is the first day of my trip to Vienna, Austria! I'm traveling with my grandparents to stay with my aunt, uncle, and cousin that live in Vienna. We started our journey at 8am this morning at the Greenville, SC, Airport. My grandpa decided to splurge on a business class seat upgrade for the 9+ hour flight. While waiting in the airport, we met a group of missionaries heading to San Diego from Washington-Dulles. Once we arrived in Vienna, we took a mid-morning nap at their 3rd floor city condo. In the afternoon, after exploring the rooftop terrace on their condo, and fueling up with some coffee, we headed to district 4, downtown Vienna. We saw St. Stephen's Cathedral in the heart of Vienna. This is when I discovered that European's love coffee and dessert at all times of the day- which I can really get into.

July 11th- We visited Prater, an old amusement park in the city center. Prater's big attractions are the Madam Tussand's wax museum and an old fashioned ferris wheel.

The artist also designed a cool apartment which we stopped to see. Tomorrow we leave for Budapest!

July 16th- We traveled to Budapest for a few days but are back in Vienna now!

Right now it's just me, my aunt & uncle, cousin, and my grandparents. Soon, I will be going to Salzburg, Austria for a 2-week german summer camp. After that, my cousins are meeting us in the Austrian Alps for a week.

We went to the Hofburg palace and toured the museum there. It was all about Sisi, an Austrian ruler in the Hofburg family. Then we went to the national library, which I really liked. Also the Natural History Museum was cool too. They had a lot of exhibits that you would not normally see. Like meteors, lots of rocks, animals and WW2 information. Tomorrow we're travelling to an underground lake that used to be a mine and secret aircraft maker during war. My aunt and uncle live about 5 mins walking distance from the Belvedere Palace.

July 17th- Today we traveled to the underground lake. Before the lake, we went to a monastery.

Later in the day, at about 6, me and my aunt & uncle went to the Naschmarkt. We ate really good sushi and then we went to the art history museum. Which was amazing. They had Egyptian and Roman artifacts. I liked those the best. They had everything from sarcophaguses to tablets written in Latin. The museum also had the largest collection of paintings I've ever seen. All old art, but still very impressive and so cool. The rooms that contained the paintings were as big as apartments and the art was incredible. There was so much to take in and we only had an hour. I discovered on this trip that I also like taking the subway. It's fast and efficient, also great for people watching. I really like the city because you can walk almost anywhere. Or just take public transportation. All the restaurants have outdoor seating too.

July 18th- We climbed 300 steps to the top of St. Stephens Cathedral! The view was incredible and completely worth the long climb up the spiral stairs. They had windows on 3 sides of the tower.

After that we went to the Cat Cafe, which sounds weird, but they had 5 cats running around in the cafe. The one I went to was the first in Europe because it was difficult to get the correct permits for cats to be in a restaurant all the time.

Then my aunt took us to the mall! And I went to a bunch of stores that we don't have in the US, plus H&M. Then after dinner the whole family went to a retro ice cream parlor. We took the subway there and back!

July 19th-

We went to the old anti-aircraft tower now turned into an aquarium. The history was very interesting and they had a lookout from the 9th floor. It was built for World War II.

Then we had a picnic in the park and walked to the imperial furniture show. It was a warehouse for all of the Hapsburgs furniture from all their palaces. They had a thousand chairs and mirrors and beds and tables. Along with sculptures and paintings. When the royal family moved from palace to palace they had the furniture stored at the warehouse. Then we went to the pool, which was more like a spa. They had a Dead Sea pool with underwater speakers and just like the Dead Sea, they had enough salt that you would float. All the water was hot and they had inside and outside pools that were connected.

Next is Salzburg to learn some german!