Vien, Austria

We arrived in Vien (Vienna) and took a taxi to our hotel. Our driver wasn't the most kind, but that wasn't going to bring us down. We were in Vienna, for crying out loud! :-)
We dropped off our bags, grabbed a map of the city and started walking. Downtown Vienna is a very walkable city. We started at the Opera House. We weren't able to get in to take a tour, so we decided to walk over to the Hofburg Palace and took a tour of the Crown Jewels. Everything was absolutely stunning. After our tour through the museum, Jess went back to the hotel to work a bit and Caitlin and I went to see a show. We saw a Classical music/Ballet/Opera Concert (that was absolutely geared for tourists). The concert was in the Palais Auersperg which is a concert hall famous for being the first place Mozart performed. We felt so cultured and it was great to get a few different art forms in one show. We were definitely happy we went.

On our second day, we went back to the Hofburg Palace to the Spanish Riding School. This was extremely informative and really cool to watch. The trainers work with 4 or 5 different sets of Lippizan horses teaching them dressage. The horses are beautiful and so talented. 

After the training, we walked across the way to the Kaiser Apartments and took the tour of the Imperial Palace, the apartments and walked through the Empress Sisi exhibit. The entire tour was really interesting, very informative and totally cool! 

There is, what seems to be, a circle around the downtown area of Vienna that is very walkable and takes you near all of the major sites. After our tour of the Palace, we walked around the city center to see all of the rest of the sites all while stopping for souvenirs, pictures and to say prayers in all of the churches. 

Vienna was beautiful and full of lots of touring and site seeing. Next stop - Prague.