Vienna

After a magical night at the Vienna Christmas market, we were extremely excited to get out and explore the rest of Austria's capital city the next morning. Vienna is a very old city, dating back to before the time of Christ. It began as a Celtic settlement, was later a Roman military camp, and eventually grew to be an important trading site, a cultural hub, and home of the Hapsburg dynasty.

Before we made our way into the heart of this beautiful imperial city, We took a little detour down by the Danube River to see some pretty amazing graffiti that Don & Austin discovered on their morning run. While it has nothing to do with the classic beauty of Vienna, it did make for some fun photography.

We also stumbled across the most whimsical little community garden!

My favorite thing was this depiction of a scene from Nintendo's Mario game across the river.

Once across the Danube, we headed straight for the heart of Vienna, where beautiful, old, white and gray buildings are in abundance and you feel like a royal procession could come down the street at any moment. First stop was the stunning Vienna Cathedral.

Peeking out through a window underneath the pulpit is what is believed to be a self-portrait of the unknown sculptor.

The pipe organ is located on the side aisle of the church, making it much easier to get close to than in a lot of churches we've been in. If only they'd let me play it!!

Our next stop was Laurel's favorite thing in Vienna - a tour of the Imperial Apartments in the Hofburg Imperial Palace. Not only did we get to see the beautiful rooms in the Imperial Apartments, we got to walk through a museum about Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, Queen of Hungary, and Queen consort of Croatia and Bohemia. Prior to this trip, we'd never even heard of Elisabeth, whose nickname was "SiSi". It didn't take long for Laurel and I to just fall in love with her and her story. We didn't realize it at the time, but SiSi would pop up again and again over our Christmas vacation!

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the Palace, but I'd be remiss not to share a picture of SiSi with you. I snagged these off the internet. The first picture is an actual portrait from SiSi's wedding day in 1854, and the other a painting done eleven years later. As you can see, she was very beautiful, and her hair was incredibly long. She reportedly sat for two hours everyday while her hairdresser groomed it.

SiSi led a very interesting, and in royal fashion, tragic life. If you like history and royals in particular, you should definitely acquaint yourself with her. She's a new favorite of ours!

Back to the Imperial Palace though...out front you can see the foundation and wall remains of the Roman settlement that was located here thousands of years ago. 

Aross the way you can see two very handsome guys who just might be tired of waiting on two girls who took forever inside the Palace!

After seeing a couple more churches, we decided it was time to eat some classic Viennese cuisine and found a great place to order some Wiener Schnitzel. Obviously we eat this in Germany often, but you know what they say...when in Rome!

After filling our bellies, we retraced the day's steps back toward our hotel, and that's when things got even better. It was twilight, and every street we walked down had different types of Christmas lights hanging from building to building.

They were all beautiful, but these took the cake! I mean, how can you top chandelier style Christmas lights? You can't!

I think it was somewhere around this point when I proclaimed that Vienna was my new favorite city, to which my husband replied, "you say that everywhere we go." It's really true this time though. Vienna is romantic and royal and beautiful, and I'd go back in a heartbeat! Til next time, Vienna!!