Quickie....haha

I need to remind myself of what I haven't blogged about yet so that after Spring Break I can hopefully write some more. Let's just say that this week has FLOWN BY!! I had two tests and tons of reading/homework. AND Claire and Seth came into town (my friends from back home in Conroe) so of COURSE I had to hang out with them too - it was awesome to see them!

But what I've done since Vienna - ummm gone SKIING (for my first time ever) in the ALPS!!! Another thing I haven't written about is that it also snowed in Salzburg - finally!! We also did a hamburger night, which was so good you don't even know.

I don't really have any pics from when Claire and Seth came, but hopefully she will post them on facebook soon. Then I can just take them off of there.

But I seriously can NOT believe that I am leaving in less than 4 hours for an amazing trip to Italy and Greece. I'm going to be flexible - just in case anything happens. We tried to be prepared for everything before we left, but something is bound to not go right/something we overlooked. BUT I don't even care because I'm going to be gone for 17 days to the most beautiful places in the world - besides Salzburg of course. Haha.

Now I need to get to packing - oh and I found a rolling duffel bag for 15.99 - AWESOME DEAL!!! I am going to have so much to write when I come back it's not even going to be funny.

Hope everyone is having/had/has a great SPRING BREAK AND EASTER!!

Spring Break...

I can't believe that Spring Break is almost here...5 days away. But everything is booked and ready to go, so all that we need now is for the day to arrive! This is what my schedule looks like:

• Leave Thursday night and take a train to Venice, Italy
• Friday March 14th - Saturday March 16th - Venice
• Train to Florence, Italy
• Sunday March 16th - Wednesday March 19th in Florence
• Leave the 19th - take a train to Rome, Italy
• Wednesday March 19th - Sunday March 23rd - Rome
• EASTER SUNDAY IN ROME!
• Fly from Rome to Athens, Greece - Sunday night
• Catch a ferry from Athens to Santorini
• Monday March 24th - Thursday March 27th - Santorini
• Ferry back to Athens
• Thursday March 27th - Sunday March 30th - Athens
• Flight from Athens to Vienna - Sunday
• Train from Vienna to Salzburg

Basically it's 17 days of Italy and Greece = time of our lives. I can't wait, but until then I have loads of homework and 2 tests. It will totally be worth it.... :)

Wien Weekend Pt. 2...

We packed our stuff the night before and basically got up, got ready, ate breakfast, checked out, then loaded onto the bus. We were now going to Schönbrunn (the summer residence of the imperial family - completed around the 1740s). It was really cool seeing all the old furniture and rooms.
Here is the front of the Palace

I took some illegal pictures inside...hehhe

The great room/ball roomMe being excited outside a side building

The gardens outside the palace....I bet this place in the spring would be beautiful!!

The back of Schönbrunn

Us in front of the back....and look at the storm brewing...

After we toured the palace and grounds, we got back on the bus and started our drive back home. On the way home though, we had another stop to make at Melk Abbey.

Here is the outside of the Abbey...

Another view

One of the many treasures of the Abbey

Inside of the marble room

Emily, Caitlin and I

The Danube

The most amazing old library with over 100,000 books

The church in the Abbey - one of the most beautiful things I've seen in my life. Definitely the most beautiful church...then again I haven't seen the inside of St. Paul's in London, but this one was awesome.Just look at the altar of this...wow.

After the Abbey, we just drove all the way back to Salzburg and had to walk home with our luggage. By that time we were just exhausted. It was a good trip, but the weather made it just a tad bit of a downer.

Wien Weekend Pt. 1...

So on February 29th we headed to Vienna for the weekend on a bus with all the other students. We knew that it was going to be raining most of the weekend so that was kind of pretty disappointing.

When we arrived, we put all our stuff in the hotel and then met downstairs right after that to go on a bus/walking tour of the city. Like I said, it was raining and obviously cloudy the whole time so the pictures weren't really that great. I'll post some, but I really wish that I had gotten to see it for all it was worth.

Here are Caitlin and Emily trying to make it a good time through the bad weather

A cool statue and building we saw on our walking part of the tour

One of the most famous sites in Vienna: Stephansdom. It's a cathedral right in the middle of the city and is 800 years old.

It was really awesome to see from the outside (especially the designs on the roof). The only bad thing is that there is construction on almost every main site, so sometimes it takes away from it a bit as well - you can see it on the spire.

Here is another view of the other side.

Inside the church

Details on one of the columns inside - pretty awesome

Of course, we then got hungry and found...MAMA's Kitchen hahaha. We got some good Austrian food. Caitlin and I shared to save some money and got turkey gulasch (mit kartoffeln - with potatoes - well it was actually like a potato dumpling thing) und frittatensuppe. It was a great meal!

The infamous Mama's Kitchen. haha.

After that we needed some dessert, so we went to Hotel Sacher the place where the original sachertorte was created! The whole experience there was actually rather annoying because they have 3 different cafes in a row and none of them would seat us and kept telling us to go back to the other ones - when there were CLEARLY seats open. How rude! So we finally got a place at the bar and ordered our sachertorte - and after all that it was just ok! But here is a pic of the place anyways.

Sachertorte

After that we just walked around a bit and made our way back to the hotel. That night, we went to go see an opera!! Vienna is an extremely artsy and high class place with tons of shows, art, and museums....so we had to experience that. The best part is....the standing room in the opera was only ZWEI EUROS (2 euros!).

Caitlin, Emily, Natalie, and Michael who is obviously not looking - all standing in line.

Inside the Vienna Opera House

Emily, me and Natalie inside ready to hear some opera!

Caitlin and I in the opera house

The Opera was actually in Italian and there were little screens that translated most of it into German or English. It was packed and the singing/orchestra was amazing! I was kind of confused though and couldn't see the whole stage...but come on...2 euros and a Viennese Opera experience...so worth it! We then left after intermission (an hour and a half in - and it was 2.5 hours long). Outside there was a pizza and kebap stand - I got spinach, garlic, and feta pizza for 2.5 euros - it was HUGE AND so goooood. :) We wanted to check out some of the nightlife so took the underground around the city and found some clubs/bars. They were really crowded and we were really tired, so we decided to go back to the hotel (and the underground stopped running at like 12:30).

The next morning we woke up and ate the free breakfast downstairs which was SO good! We then had a scheduled tour at the Art History Museum.

Outside of the Kunsthistorisches Museum

The ceiling of part of the museum

Me posing in front of the entrance stairway

One of the many painting galleries

One of the most awesome/popular painting there

My favorite was actually the temporary exhibit where the artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo used pieces of fruit, vegetables, food to make people's faces. It was great!

Another shot of the museum's interior

A mummified crocodile!!

Me in front of the Egyptian part of the museum

So after we finished at the museum we were trying to decide where to go next and the big door to the museum opened and slammed shut - let's just say that the winds were like 35 mph and it was pouring. greatttt. haha. We decided that we wanted to do this apfelstrudel making seminar thing and you get the recipe and get to eat it etc,....we took the underground for like 45 minutes to get there (by the time we transfered and everything) and walked there.....we asked and they said they only do it in the summer. WTF! The booklet failed to say that piece of info.

Sad faces because we couldn't make apfelstrudel :(

Cool picture of the rathaus of Vienna (city hall)

So then we decided to have an adventure where we looked in all the travel books and brochures we had and decided to go to as many places as we could the rest of the day. We planned it out and found the route there too. We decided to go to Bagel Station (bagels were apparently invented in Vienna...), Centimeter (sandwiches for 10 cents per cm), and Cafe Central (to get our apfulstrudel and have some coffee which Vienna is very popular for!).

Caitlin and me (acting like a dummy) in front of the 2 spire church - which I had really wanted to see and we randomly came across it! yay!

Stop #1Stop #2Stop #3Our apfelstrudel - which was the best in the whole world

AND the best drink - Wiener Eiskaffee

Group (minus Clayton - taking the pic) at Cafe Central

After we hit those three stops, we went back to the hotel to change. We then took the underground back to the clubs/bars we had seen before. We wanted to go back to this place called the Bermuda Triangle and it was packed, but we squeezed in and just started dancing for like an hour and a half. It was hilarious that everyone loved the song "Mambo #5" and then they were singing all these Austrian/German songs too and we just mouthed it. I don't know....but it was really funny. We were exhausted and had to get up at 6 the next morning, so we had to leave. Of course the underground wasn't running anymore so we had to walk like 35 minutes back home through the sprinkling rain....all to save like 2 euros from not getting a taxi. haha.

I have to do Sunday on a different post, because this one is getting way too long....