Our second class trip together was to Vienna, Austria and Venice, Italy. We traveled together from April 9-13.
DAY 1
After dropping our bags off at our hostel, we took a little walking tour of Vienna. First we walked by The Hofburg Palace. Which is the former principal imperial palace of the Habsburg dynasty rulers and today serves as the official residence and workplace of the President of Austria. It is located in the center of Vienna and was built in the 13th century and expanded several times afterwards.
I loved walking around this area knowing that it once was used for royal activities and events. The buildings were enormous and beyond beautiful! All I know is that in another life I hope that I was somehow able to experience a life of royalty, attending balls, and wearing big fancy dresses! (just kidding, but it could have happened :0) One of my favorite parts about walking around the grounds of the Hofburg palace was the horse-drawn carriages everywhere.
During our free time, we explored the streets of Vienna looking for a cool place to sit down and eat. We stopped at this restaurant that looked really interesting with a cute patio sitting area. The weather outside was so nice, so we decided to take a seat and check it out. However, we went inside to order, and only then did we find out that the restaurant was vegan. I had this meatball thing that wasn't actually meat, with cheesy carrots and peas, and some kind of sauerkraut. Let's just say that I could never be vegan, I like the taste of food too much! ;) The best part of my entire lunch was probably my drink which was like a blood orange juice! For dessert, we went into a little Swedish chocolate shop that had gelato and slabs of different flavors of chocolate. I had a vanilla cone and some different kinds of dark chocolate which were quite interesting. The ice cream, however, was absolutely delicious!!
Our group was supposed to visit the museum of the Hofburg family but when we arrived to the museum we saw that it was unfortunately closed only on Tuesdays. Our professor, Martin, explained that this is typical practice for museums in Vienna, however, they usually close on Mondays. So as we always do while traveling and something goes wrong, we recovered and made a new plan! There are tons of museums in Vienna so we went to the area where there are several options to choose from in order to visit a museum instead of the one that we intended to visit. Unfortunately those museums were also closed on Tuesdays! Haha So our professor basically gave us the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted in Vienna. We rescheduled out museum tours for the following day and then the class dispersed to explore the beautiful city on our own.
It was such a beautiful day outside, so Sara T had found a place where we could go paddle boarding. A bunch of people were planning to go with us and we all were super excited. Unfortunately, we later discovered that the facility was not open for the season. I know that up to this point our day sounds like a bit of a bust, which it kinda was, but it turned around quick when we decided to just go out and find some fun stores and shop the rest of the day! My favorite store that we found was a refurbished vintage clothing shop, which was sooooo big. Lauren, Sara, Kristen, Lindsay and I had such a blast trying on actual “vintage” Levi shorts and skirts. However, it was a little depressing for us all because the sizing throughout time has definitely changed!! Haha!! Our mothers generation, my mother included, were skinny little minis, so the clothes fit a little differently. Below are some fun pictures of cool stores we went into and funny dressing room photos when three of us girls crammed into one room at Zara. (Which p.s. is my new favorite store, thank you Lauren)
To finish off the night, Lauren, Lindsay and I went to eat at a cafe. I had a delicious savory crepe for dinner and then we shared a sweet fruity crepe for dessert! We sat and talked for a couple of hours and enjoyed each other's company. We finally walked back to hostel to join the rest of the group who was hanging out together, and eventually got to sleep.
DAY 2
Our second day in Vienna was packed with lots of events because of the lack of things that we were able to do the first day. So we got up, ate a typical European breakfast at our hostel, which includes meat, cheese, bread, yogurt, cereal, coffee, and tea. These morning breakfasts together as a group are fun because it is one of the only meals during the day that the whole group gets to eat together.
After finishing with breakfast, we set out to conquer the city!! Our first stop was Die Kaiserliche Schatzkammer - The Imperial Treasury. The Imperial Treasury houses many valuables of the Habsburg family. To explain the history of the entire place would take forever, so I am just going to share pictures of my favorite items and talk about what they are. First, there were several absolutely amazing crowns that I saw. The intricacy of these items fascinates me. The first picture below is an example of one crown that was very intricate and possesses lots of meaning. When you look very closely at the gold plating on the sides of the crown there are impressions of the Kings Coronations. I think it is absolutely crazy the amount of expertise and skill that it would take to make something like this. As I listened to my audio guide I was amazed at all the different symbolic meanings there were on this crown. From the color and placement of the jewels to the tiered effect it created, there was so much thought put into this crown. My next favorite item was the Habsburg baby crib. The same theme of thoughtfulness and intricacy carries over from the crowns into this piece of furniture. Lastly, there was a portion of the museum that held the relics of Christ. Supposedly, here lies a nail that pierced one of Jesus’s hands on the cross. I don't know if I actually believe that or not, but either way, it was still really cool to see. It is possible that I saw a piece of history that saved all of mankind. CRAZY!! Like I said before, there was literally so much stuff in this museum, gold, diamonds, jewels, narwhal horns, haha and so many other things! While walking through the history of one family and all of their wealth and valuables, I couldn't help but think about why one family would need so many jewels and wealth when their people were poor on the street. The way times have changed in terms of royalty to democracy is for the best, but the treasures sure are fun to gauck over!!
Next on the agenda for the day was to visit the Natural History Museum of Vienna. I know what you’re thinking, why would one go to a natural history museum when in Vienna, Austria with lots of other historical museums. Well, let me share with you how cool this museum was! It was so different from any of the Natural History museums that I have been to in the states. The architecture inside was gorgeous, the layout of the building was fantastic, and each exhibit was so detailed and huge! The entire time I was touring it (which took like 2 hours going pretty fast) I felt like I was in Night at the Museum, getting ready for the animals to come alive and start talking to me. LOL! My favorite rooms were the Gem and Mineral room and the Deep Ocean Exhibit. I will attach lots of pictures for you to look at the different exhibits, but there isn’t much to talk about as far as explaining the exhibits. My pictures of the museum just do not do it justice, so I have also added a video walkthrough of the exhibits to give you a better idea of what the enormous museum was like!
I ended up going through most of the museum by myself because everyone else goes through museums much faster than I do. I got this wonderful attribute from my mother haha. So after I finally finished all of the exhibits I met Sarah F at the end because she had waited for me, and then we went to meet some of the other girls. What is about to follow is basically a tour of all the cafes that we proceeded to visit that afternoon. We started at the Hofburg Cafe where I had a wonderful plate of spaghetti, and then warm apple strudel for dessert. Apple Strudel is a traditional dish of Vienna so I felt that it was only right to try it! ;) The group I was with consisted of Sara T, Sarah F, Lauren W, and Kristen U. Each one of us enjoyed our food and each others company as we sat there for quite a while eating. Before leaving the restaurant to find the Easter Market, I went to the FREE restroom and found the funny sign that you see below.
We sought out the Easter Egg Market of Vienna which is said to be one of the most romantic Easter markets. In front of the backdrop of the Schönbrunn Palace, exhibitors offer all sorts of culinary pleasures as well as decorative Easter decorations and handicrafts from Austria. While walking through the market we were able to admire Europe’s biggest tower of eggs with around 40,000 painted Easter eggs.
After spending a good amount of time wandering through the Easter market, the weather decided to take a turn and a light drizzle started to make it really uncomfortable to be outside. Our group decided to take refuge in Cafe Central. This cafe has 140 years of history and was first opened in 1876. At the turn of the 20th century, it was a popular meeting place for leading lights in the world of art, literature, politics and science such as Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud, Peter Altenberg and Leon Trotsky. As one of the cities oldest coffee houses they uphold traditional values of Viennese coffee culture. The atmosphere is perfect for a casual sit down with friends in an elegant relaxed setting. We sat here and ate desserts and drank wine for a couple of hours, laughing and crying at funny and sad things.
As I mentioned in my daily life blog, the rest of our day basically consisted of Cafe Hopping as we were told to do by locals. After Cafe Central, Lauren W, Sarah F, and I decided to take a horse and carriage ride around the city at dusk. This experience was seriously so much fun because it was right at the time when the sun was setting and all the pretty lights on the streets were starting to glow, guiding us around old town Vienna. To make the experience even better, I queued up some music to set the mood for our royal carriage ride! ;) Our final stop of the night was Cafe Sacher where I had the original chocolate cake that they are famous for. This restaurant had a beautiful interior, and we had the cutest baby sitting next to us that I got to make faces at all night. We eventually made our way back to our hostel to pack up and get ready to depart for Venice in the morning.
DAY 3
On the third day of our trip, we left Vienna after breakfast to drive to our next destination which was Venice Italy. Our drive through Austria was foggy, rainy, green and absolutely gorgeous!! After several hours of driving, we arrived at a train station on the main land where our group took a train to the the Island of Venice. The next part of this journey was a little bit of a struggle. Venice in not actually one island, it is made up of 117 separate islands connected by 400 bridges. So just imagine for a second, a group of 23 people with suitcases and backpacks walking through crowds of people going up and down bridges all the way across the island in order to get to our hostel. It was tiring for sure but the hostel that we stayed at was well worth the walk, probably one of the coolest places I have stayed so far.
After getting settled into our rooms, our group took a walking tour of the main parts of Venice. We walked past the famous bridge with no railing. Commonly known as Ponte di Chiodo, it is one of only two remaining Venetian bridges with no parapet thus it holds a bit of interest for tourists. It gives an interesting snapshot back into the 18th century when many of Venice’s bridges were constructed with no railing. The next stop on our walking tour with our professor Martin, was the Old Jewish Ghetto. In class the week before, we learned about the first Jewish Ghetto in Europe which is located in Venice.
The word ghetto, so widespread in all languages, originates here, from the Venetian word "geto" . In ancient times, in the early Middle Ages, in this part of the city there was an ancient foundry (a "geto" in Venetian) which was used to forge the bombards, the small cannons of Venetian ships. When, for political reasons, in 1516 the Republic of the Serenissima established by law that all Jews should live and reside here, the population came mostly from Central and Eastern Europe and it was precisely because of their pronunciation that the Venetian term "geto" , was mangled in "gheto", giving rise to the term we use today all over the world. Little by little, despite the alternation of permits and stay bans in the city, the Jews became a considerable nucleus in Venice and, feeling the need to organize their presence, the Government of the Republic, with a decree dated March 29, 1516, established obligations and restrictions for the entire Jewish population. It was thus decided that everyone should live in only one area of the city, without being able to leave it either at night or during Christian holidays .To control the movement of the Jews in and out of the ghetto, the two entrances and exits to the ghetto were guarded at night. To imagine the amount of people who lived in this small place really just broke my heart. They also had to pay extra taxes to pay for the guards that controlled their freedom to freely roam Venice.
From here our class visited St. Marcs Square which is considered one of the finest squares in the world and certainly Venice's prime attraction, it is surrounded on three sides by the stately arcades of public buildings and on the fourth, by Basilica di San Marco's and the soaring St. Mark's campanile. Other attractions located in the square are Palazzo Ducale (also known as the Doge’s Palace), Torre dell'Orologio (Clock Tower), the Bridge of Sighs, among others. We visited several of these sights the next day. From here the group dispersed to go and eat for the night, Lauren and I went to eat at an authentic Italian restaurant with Martin and Mims.
DAY 4
Our second day in Venice started with a fantastic breakfast at our hostel followed by a walk back to the main square to begin our tours for the day. First, we toured St. Mark's Basilica which was jaw droppingly gorgeous! This basilica was unlike any other church that I have visited in Europe. The architecture on the inside and outside was extraordinary, with such a different look than anything else that we have visited thus far! It left me truly in awe of how anyone could execute something so precisely. There are more than 85,000 square feet of mosaic in St. Mark’s Basilica which is enough to cover over 1.5 American football fields! The mosaics were done over 8 centuries, mostly in gold, and the result is astonishing. (I was lucky enough to actually attend Easter Mass at this amazing place 1 week later.)
While we were waiting to tour the Doge’s Palace we walked up onto a bridge that lovers and family members used to stand on to catch a glimpse of their loved ones being walked across an adjacent bridge called the Bridge of Sighs. The Bridge of Sighs is named as such because it was used to lead prisoners from the examining rooms to their cells in the Prigioni. Legend has it that prisoners who crossed the bridge on the way to their prison cells or the execution chamber would sigh as they caught their last glimpses of Venice through the tiny windows. The prisoners walk through this bridge was also their loved ones last chance to see them before became prisoners or were executed. Having been on both sides of the windows of this bridge I find it hard to believe that the women or men could even see the faces of their loved ones due to the low visibility caused by the design of the bridge.
Touring the Doge's palace was, of course, amazing as it contained numerous beautiful rooms embellished with larger than life paintings, and gold plated decorations from floor to ceiling. The palace was the residence of the Doge of Venice, the supreme authority of the former Venetian Republic. As a place of the Venetian government, the Palace is the very symbol of Venice and a masterpiece of Gothic architecture. My favorite part of the entire tour was the ginormous ballroom that Lauren and I had to try out ourselves. We had a little bit of fun by dancing around the room with each other (very badly I may add, two girls dancing together is just bad news, ALWAYS) haha. After last touring the prison of Prigioni, which was cold, and eerie, we moved onto the next monument for the day!
St. Mark's Campanile is the bell tower of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy, located in the Piazza San Marco. It is one of the most recognizable symbols of the city. The tower is 98.6 meters tall, and stands alone in a corner of St Mark's Square, near the front of the basilica. Many of my classmates and I decided to take a trip to the top of this monument to get a view of the city from a higher point. Because if it wasn’t already apparent, we all loved getting to an elevated surface for the views and of course pictures. The view from the top was well worth the wait in a line outside the door in the freezing cold. The weather got even more chilling being almost 100 meters in the air, but again, it was so worth it! Venice really is a gorgeous city!!
To get out of the cold, Alex, Sara, Cici, Lauren, Lindsay, Seth, Kirsten, and Sarah went to a family owned pizza parlor where we had fantastic pizza! We even were able to experience live music on an accordion, I loved this because it added to the atmosphere of the restaurant. Reality stuck that I really was sitting in Italy eating an authentic Italian pizza. I always have such a great time with all of my girlies, and Seth of course! From here we decided that we were going to try to catch a gondola to do the iconic gondola ride through the canals of Venice. The six of us girls split the fair of the ride and piled into the tiny little boat. We still aren’t really sure why, but the people in the taxi boat next to us were just cracking up that these six Americans were piled into the boat. They were warning us that we were for sure going to flip the boat, but I can say that we successfully completed the trip without any incidents. I truly loved this experience, being able to travel through the canals the way that locals have been doing for hundreds of years was magical. Me being my mother's daughter, I felt that the gondola ride was just missing the element of music. SOOOO I tuned into my Amazon Music account and pulled up a playlist for famous Italian music to play to add the ambiance of the ride. We had a great time being on the water and I honestly can’t wait to come back to Venice to take a romantic gondola with my future hubby (lol if that ever happens!). I think this feeling was shared between us all.
On our way to Liberia Acqua Alta, Lauren and I stopped for round 5,302,374 of gelato, and then our group ran into an interesting shop. It was one of those places where you can get a pedicure by a fish called a red garra. These little shops have been all over Europe and since our group really was just looking for things to do, a couple of us decided to do it! Sara, Lauren, and I all stuck our feet in at the same time and let me tell you I was more scared than I thought I would have been. The moment we stuck our feet into the water all you could hear were little screams and saw us squirming in our seats. Our group attracted people from outside to stop and watch as we were writhing in our seats. Needless to say, we weren't a great advertisement for the shop. However, the three of us made it through the grueling 10 minutes of uncomfort, and it actually did work as our feet were smoother afterward.
Our group continued our journey towards the Libreria Acqua Alta, but stopped in some really cool shops along the way! We finally arrived at Liberia that is said to be one of Venice’s hidden gyms. The self-proclaimed “most beautiful bookstore in the world” is composed of a number of over-stuffed rooms stacked wall-to-wall with books, magazines, maps, and other ephemera. Due to Venice’s constant flooding, however, these picturesque piles are all placed inside bathtubs, waterproof bins, and in one room a full-size gondola. Its name, Libreria Acqua Alta, even translates to “Book Store of High Water.” To complete the quirky atmosphere, the shop has also become home to more than one stray cat who can escape the flooding by hanging out atop one of the floating vessels of books.
Next up on our tour of hidden gems of Venice was the staircase at Scala Contarini del Bovolo. The tallest spiral staircase of Venice is a perfect synthesis of different architecture styles (Renaissance, Gothic and Venetian-Byzantine). It was commissioned by Pietro Contarini in late 1400 as a decorative element of the adjacent family's Palazzo. Named after the Venetian word for a snails shell (bovolo), it is said that the family had this intricate staircase built as an ornament to disguise the relatively plain palace behind it. Unfortunately, we arrived at this place too late and were unable to actually climb to the top to see the amazing views that are promised when looking out from the top floor.
We finished out the night by stopping at our favorite ice cream shop on our way back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. They serve a dessert here called mochi, which took me a second to get used too, but I ended up loving it! Mochi ice cream is a confection made from Japanese mochi (pounded sticky rice) with an ice cream filling, SERIOUSLY SO YUMMY! The six of us girls got ready for dinner and a night out on the town meeting local college students and celebrating their graduations with them. My time in Venice would not have been the same without the amazing girlfriends that I have made while study abroad! I can’t express enough how beautiful each one of them is inside and out.
With Love, Annalise