Wien

Since we didn't have a place to stay in Zurich, we hopped another night train to Vienna. Poor Jared didn't catch a wink of sleep both train rides (we shared the cochettes with 4 other people, he was too tall for the beds, and the attendants/police checking passports kept barging in), but luckily for me, I can sleep through anything.

Vienna was spectacular! One thing I absolutely loved about the city was that we could just hop on a tram and it literally went in a circle around all the main sites. This made it really easy for us to site-see, and we could just hop on and off whenever we wanted a closer look around. Unfortunately, it rained most of the time there, and it was really pretty cold. But we crazy Californians managed somehow.

A couple of my favorite stops was to the two royal palaces in the city. There was the "main palace" and the "summer palace". The grounds at the summer palace were meticulously gardened and huge! Not too shabby. They even had the Vienna zoo there! It was fun to walk around on the grounds and just enjoy the space.

Also, we got to go to church in Vienna. This was a unique experience in that church was in German. We looked like total rejects in our scrubby clothes, tennis shoes, backpacks, and such. But we still sang all the hymns (from memory in English) and even chatted with a few people who wanted to test out their English. Ironically tho, we sat right by the missionaries, and even tho it was extremely obvious that we were visitors, they didn't even introduce themselves. We felt a little rejected, maybe we scared them away by our appearance. :)

But, we had a great time in Vienna, and absolutely loved the buildings. Despite the rain, it was well worth the trip.

This is the outside of the opera house. We tried to get in to an opera, but they were sold out. But, what we did get to see of the outside and inside of the opera house was beautiful!
This is the parliament building. It's pretty fancy. We especially liked the statue/fountain in front.
This is City Hall! It looked like a cathedral! I wouldn't mind jury duty so much if it could be in a building like this!
Here is a statue of Mozart with a treble clef flower garden. We thought it was pretty cool.
This is the main palace in the city. Mozart's tribute was actually on the palace grounds here.
And this is the summer palace and a bit of the gardens. I wouldn't mind living here!
Look at the trees in the background. How cool is that???? (and this is me on the summer palace grounds.)
Also on the grounds at the summer palace, they had a maze and a labyrinth that you could go into. Jared wanted to do this over seeing the inside of the palace. It was fun to play around in here.