August 21st, Long Day

August 21st, Long Day….

I went to the Naschmarkt for lunch. I am getting hooked on wiener schnitzels. To me it seems like Austrian food is always something fried (liker wiener schnitzels) or something sugary (like the tortes)! Hey I’m not complaining. Afterward I went Schonbrunn Palace. It was amazing. Just by looking at you could see just how wealthy the Hapsburgs were. It was so big that I wasn’t able to see all of it. I bought the Golden Pass, which apparently was good for one year. The first thing on the to-do list at Schonbrunn was the tour of the palace. It seemed like a lot of rooms to visit, but I know that it was about half of the palace that I saw on the tour. However it was very exquisite to see all the decorations and the amount of wealth displayed there. To me, most of the rooms looked like they were decorated in the rococo style. A style that is very ornate and flowery. The ballroom, I believe it was, looked like Versai’s Hall of Mirrors. I was able to sneak in a few photos of the palace. The details that they paid attention to when decorating the palace is just amazing. After the grand tour of the palace, I went to go look at the Privy Garden, the Maze (I did get a little lost, but I just told my friends that I had made it to the end, but went back to look for them.) and then to the Gloreitte (the Panorama View). I went to the top of the terrace and was able to see a nice view of the city. You could just picture yourself in a carriage, arriving at the palace. Afterwards I headed over to the zoo. The zoo was one of the best parts. It was so exciting to see animals that you wouldn’t see at the Sacramento Zoo. There were so many baby animals, like the panda bear, polar bears, sea lion, the bison and so much more. I was wondering if the Emperors had such an elaborate zoo when they had live in the palace. I know that they did have wild and exotic animals, like an ostrich, but did they have a zoo as large as the one there is today? After the zoo I walked around the palace grounds a bit more. There are so many fountains and statues in the place. After visiting Schonbrunn, I headed over to Westbanhof by myself to buy my train tickets to Budapest. It was fun to get on a different subway. At the train station, it seemed like it was busier than ever. It is so nice to have efficient transportation that goes all over Europe. You kind of wish that the U.S. or even California had that kind of transportation. After buying my tickets, I decided to head over to the Kunsthitorisches Museum. Again. It was open till 9 PM. I had two hours to myself. It was so nice to be there when there were not that many people visiting. I was able to talk to the guards there. A couple of them had studied Art History, and so they were able to help me out with the Catholic and Protestant works. I’ll write more on that later. I met this one young college student who was earning her degree in Art History. She said that she wanted to teach the subject one day. One of the guards asked me what “Blimey” meant, and I told them that I wasn’t British. I thought that was kind of funny that they thought I was British. I have had many people mistaken my nationality. Once I had some tourists ask me where the underground train. Someone had thought that I was from Belgium. Anyways, I feel like I am blending in with the Austrian culture.