After leaving Prague, I was off to Austria! My trip would only be for 3 days unfortunately, but I would get to see Vienna: home of the Viennese Waltz, and Salzburg: where the Sound of Music was filmed!!
In Vienna, I went to the Schonbrunn Palace. It was gorgeous! If you have seen Marie Antoinette, I parallel it to Versailles. Of course, I haven't actually seen Versailles so I can't be sure. The palace is extremely long and very regimented. The palace is rectangular and U shaped. It was a pale yellow and beautiful. Then it has acres and acres of gardens behind it, open to be walked through and explored. There is also the oldest zoo in the world (which I ran out of time to see) right on the property. half way up the hill behind the palace, there is a fountain that resembles the Trevi fountain. It is not as tall, but it is wide and shows Neptune, and I loved it. Finally, the Glorietta is at the top of the hill behind the palace. This is the same kind of architecture as the palace in my opinion, it is much smaller though and has a cafe inside where you can eat. The best part is the view! You can see the entire city of Vienna from that spot.
I also went to the Spanish Riding School where they train the horses that do tricks. They literally skip and bounce on all 4s and balance on their hind legs, and do a bunch of moves to Mozart (who was from Vienna). In the morning you can go to their morning practice. I was extremely excited about this! It is only around 8 euro for a student (12 for an adult) when a performance would cost upwards of 80 euro. I went to the practice and was entertained a bit, but more so disappointed. There is no performance quality. They take the horses that aren't ready to perform and teach them the tricks from square one individually. Every 30 minutes, a new rotation of horses come out. The sad part is that this means you never see a horse actually learn the trick and do it. All you see is horses trying and failing to skip, bounce, and balance. Not as thrilling and I had hoped. I decided to just YouTube a performance when I got home.
Also, while I was in Vienna, I checked out the cathedral, which oddly had its windows covered in colored saran wrap... and the Burg Garden which had a nice memorial to Mozart. Other than that though, I really didn't know what else to see in Vienna. I must say, it was my least favorite place I've visited so far...
After Vienna, I went to Salzburg. In order to prepare, I watched the Sound of Music and googled film locations. In the morning, I hiked up to the 11th century fortress that overlooks the city. It is beautiful and very picturesque, not so exciting from the inside though. If you run out of time, I'd say you can skip it. Then I hiked over to the other end of the Monchsberg mountain to go to the exact spot where they filmed the start of Do Re Mi. It was beautiful, except for the drizzle, but well worth it!
Then I went down to the main part of town and checked out the cathedral and the cemetery which inspired the Abbey cemetery in the movie. It was beautiful! There were flowers everywhere. Definitely the least creepy cemetery I've been in yet. The very last thing to see was the Gazebo from the movie. I took the bus out to Hellbrunn Palace and got to see the gazebo from "Sixteen going on Seventeen". I was so cool! Surprisingly, the gazebo was actually built by Hollywood and donated to the city after the film. I had no idea.
After a thoroughly successful day in one of the most beautiful cities I've seen, I took the train to Munich. Time to return to Germany and just enjoy beer and the castle that inspired Sleeping Beauty's castle. No more sightseeing or being a tourist. I just wanted to relax.
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