Austria and Italy

I feel rather perpetually behind, but I've been feeling too tired to write a long blog post catching up. Let's see how well I do today.

Salzburg is easy to finish off, because my third day I just went to the old town (across the river Salzac from the new town), wandered around a lot, then went back to the Mirabel gardens for awhile and hung out. I did very much like Salzburg. Small enough to walk around in, but gorgeous countryside, bigger cities pretty close by, and still things to do.

The next day I left for Vienna. The countryside was not quite as beautiful as Munich to Salzburg, but still quite pretty. When I got out of the train station in Vienna, I got a bit lost trying to get to my hostel. I found the right street, but ended up going the wrong way down it. I knew the hostel was supposed to be close by, so when it felt like I went too far I turned around and decided to go back the other way, and then I passed the train station...and there it was. Definitely the closest I've been to a train station, even in Munich, or here in Venice. I felt a bit silly for having gone the wrong way, but at least I did find it.

After I checked in, I went to the Sigmund Freud museum, which was the building where he lived and practiced while in Vienna. It was small but interesting. I really prefer specialized museums unique to specific places to bigger art galleries or ethnology museums that I can find in almost all the cities I've been to so far.

After the Sigmund Freud museum I took a tram around the Ring Road, which is a ring around the center of the city and shows off a lot of its attractions, like the Hofburg Palace (and everything in it, including the Spanish Riding School and the Vienna Boys' Choir), the Museums Quarter, and the Parliament. Very cool. Lots of impressive buildings. I especially liked the Parliament building, though I think it ranks after Westminster in terms of impressiveness. So far the parliaments I've seen in order of impressiveness are London, Vienna, Berlin, then Edinburgh, but I'm looking forward to seeing the Paris government buildings.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around, though it was raining and I got rather wet. Still, after Tacoma and London I'm pretty used to that, and it didn't bother me too much. My hostel gave me a map that included sights and restaurants/cafes they liked, so for dinner I decided to go to this pizza place that was advertised as cheap but good. And it was cheap but very good, but even better, the pizza was the size of a medium at home, rather than the one-person pizzas that are mostly what I've seen in Europe, so I had some to take back for lunch.

The next day I went to the cemetery, which seems to be a tourist attraction for two reasons: the famous people interred there, including the composers Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Strauss, and Beethoven, and the sheer impressiveness of the headstones. That's a word that I'm using a lot in relation to Vienna, but it really fits. Many of these graves were just so elaborate, filled with carvings and statuary...I didn't get many pictures, though. I did of the composers' graves (at least, the composers I recognized), but I didn't feel right about taking pictures of random graves, no matter how pretty and/or impressive they were.

I spent the rest of the day at Schoenbrunn Palace, which had been home to Empress Maria Theresa, and then later to Emperor Franz Josef I, and as befitting an imperial residence, it was...impressive. Hah, there's that word again. Likewise with the gardens, or even more so. Those are definitely the biggest gardens I've seen, with a lot of tree-lined lanes, fenced-off green areas, manicured flower beds, fountains, including a huge one in the middle, a mock Roman ruin, an obelisk, and a maze area, and those are just the places I went to. There's also a zoo and some other things I didn't get to, because it took me a couple hours to see the things I did. There was an adorable little train going all over the park, but I didn't take it. I did do the maze, though, which was fun, though fairly small.

This was Vienna, a significant city for music, and I did want to see something before I left. At Schoenbrunn I saw advertisements for Mozart's The Magic Flute at the marionnette theatre, so I got a ticket for that. And while it was marionnettes and not people on stage, I thought it was very well performed, and I enjoyed it very much, even though it was in German and I understood at most scattered words here and there. I still managed to get most of the story, at least. I'd been dubious about opera ever since that production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in London, which no one in my group liked, but this I really enjoyed. I think I'm going to see if I can go in Paris.

The third day I went and took pictures of some things in the center, like the Hofburg Palace and the museums and the Parliament. By the Hofburg Palace there's this statue of Mozart and in front of it is a grassy area with a flower bed in the shape of a treble clef. That was pretty cool. Also, I went to the Opera and took a tour of that. It was very cool, even if I wasn't going to be seeing a performance there. But I was glad that I saw The Magic Flute, even if at a marionnette theatre and not the Opera, because I haven't heard of the ones that were playing while I was there and I'm glad I at least knew something about the one that I saw.

My hostel offered free pasta in the guest kitchen, so I had pasta for dinner, then went to catch my night train to Venice. Twelve hours, gah. At least I was able to sleep through most of that, so it wasn't too bad.

I got to Venice at about eight-thirty in the morning, and this is seriously the most confusing, illogical city I've ever been to. I definitely got lost trying to find my hostel, but that's because the address on the hostel website, which I'd used for googlemaps, was outdated. Apparently what I'd needed to do was go across the first bridge I saw and down the street, and there it was, a good two minutes from the train station. Instead I wandered across Venice with all my luggage for forty-five minutes, until finally some helpful Venetian managed to get me to the original address, and someone there directed me to the right place.

But then I got to my hostel, which is the most adorable place ever. My room is like a little apartment, with its own tiny kitchen. It has an outer door and then a courtyard and then my room, and there's another courtyard out the window, and it's really cute. Definitely a nice place. Anyway, I dropped my stuff off and, armed with the map given to me at reception, wandered out into Venice.

Maps are the most useful things ever. Venice has a ridiculous number of long dark alleys it tries to call streets, but thankfully I have a good head for maps, so once I had one, I had no problem getting around. The guy at reception marked this loop that would take me to most of the sights in the city and then back around to the hostel, so that's what I did the first day. I didn't really go in anywhere, but I saw the Rialto, and the Piazzo San Marco and Basilica di San Marco, and quite a lot of churches. This city has the highest concentration of churches I think I've ever seen.

Day two I went to Murano, a little island just off Venice proper, because that's where the famed glassmaking is. It was an adorable place in itself, but somehow I managed to spend four hours there just looking at the glass. In some shops, the shopkeepers would just be casually shaping glass behind the counter. I've been to the Tacoma Glass Museum several times and have seen people making glass before, so I didn't spend that long watching, but Murano had so much more variety than the museum gift shop in Tacoma. Unsurprisingly, hah. But yeah. Beautiful glass.

After that I just looked around Venice some more, then went back to my hostel and talked for about an hour with a roommate from Brazil. I went for dinner after that and had a caprese salad, because that is one of my favorite salads ever and I enjoyed having on in Italy. Then I just went back to my hostel and stayed in the common room for awhile, talking to people. At around nine some people were really hungry and decided to go for pizza, and I went with them but only had a couple slices. Just spent a lot of time talking to my fellow travelers.

Today one of my roommates and I decided to catch some sights together and also find me a dress, because I've been wanting to go dress-shopping. We took the bus (basically a ferry, because of course people don't drive here, they walk or take boats) down the Grand Canal, which was very pretty, and got off at Piazzo San Marco. We decided against going in the duke's palace because it was expensive, but the Basilica was free. She couldn't go in because she was wearing shorts and sandals, but I had jeans and proper shoes so I went in. And of course I would expect this from a basilica, but it was definitely one of the prettiest and most impressive churches I've been to. The floor was all mosaic and the ceiling all gold and pictures, and though we're not supposed to take photos I did anyway.

I found a dress I liked after that, and it wasn't very expensive, so whoo! Something nice to wear in Paris, especially if I do manage to get to the opera. Now all I need is a bathing suit for Nice, because I didn't bring one, and then I think I'll be done with accumulating things, for which my luggage will thank me, I'm sure.

I have five mosquito bites right now. I will be very pleased if I manage to make it out of this mosquito-ridden area with only five.

I made seat reservations for my journey to Nice, which will be something of a hassle. The Eurail timetable I have implied that there's a train from Venice to Nice, but apparently there's not just one. I have to take five trains tomorrow, three of them for less than half an hour, so that'll be...fun. At least once I get to Nice, I'll have just the train to Paris left. And then, just the two flights home.

I have very much enjoyed going to all these different places, but traveling so much is tiring, and not being settled in one place for longer than three days at a time. I was happy in London, but though I definitely appreciate everything I've done since getting to the continent, I will be happy to go home.