vienna

after venice, we took a bus through the alps to the beautiful city of vienna! we were only there for about a day and a half. i would definitely like to go back someday, as there was a lot more to see. my favorite thing that we did see was probably the kunsthistoriches museum, which is home to the hapsburg royal family's collection of art. we saw works by titian, brueghel, vermeer, and many others. i loved seeing vermeer's allegory of the art of painting in person, as i've done both a presentation and a paper on that work! another fun thing about the kunsthistoriches museum was that there were so many artists copying works in the galleries. i love watching artists at work like that; it's really neat.

after the kunsthistoriches museum, we visited the galerie belvedere, which i also loved because their collection includes many works by gustav klimt. one funny thing about vienna was that it was completely obvious that they are very proud of mozart and of klimt. you couldn't walk down any street without seeing portraits of mozart and images of the kiss. but after seeing the kiss in person, i don't blame them! the kiss has always been one of my favorite paintings, and standing in front of it took my breath away. it was so beautiful, and with the gold leaf it positively glowed. i had to take a sneaky picture, but of course, it didn't capture the magnificence and luminosity of the real thing. it was unreal.

while in vienna we also visited schönbrunn, a palace with beautiful gardens. i really loved visiting all these palaces in europe. it makes me really wish we had some here in america! by this point in our trip, we were really craving some american food, so we all ordered cheeseburgers for dinner and basically devoured them as quickly as possible. that wasn't enough, so we also indulged in multiple desserts, as one should while eating out in europe. the dish my friend brooke is holding in that photo above looks like spaghetti, but it's actually spaghetti-eis, which is ice cream! it was delicious, as was the chocolate crêpe.

another definite highlight of the trip was visiting salzburg, austria, on our way from vienna to germany. salzburg is where the sound of music was filmed, and we had so much fun wandering around the gardens and singing do-re-mi. it was the best. then we were off to munich!