Vienna Day Two

Last night we had a late dinner at a restaurant near our apartment. I had my first wienerschnitzel and it was pretty good, but not amazing. It was very similar to chicken fried steak. I'm glad the food here is very different from what we've been eating in Italy the last two weeks because I'm tired of eating pizza. We have noticed that Austrians seem to really like chives. We found this quite funny last night since chives are one of the few foods that Mark doesn't really like and they were all over every single thing that we ordered. At least now that we are out of Italy we don't have to worry about our waiters bringing us complimentary shots of lemoncello (yuck!).

We slept well last night. The last few apartments we stayed in have been very loud (especially the one in Rome because there was a bar right below us) but this one seems quiet and more secluded so far.

Today we visited St. Stephen's Church, one of the main churches in Vienna. We plan to go back tomorrow because there was a mass in session so we could only see part of the church. It looked very beautiful from what we could tell so far. The only thing I didn't like was that they had some colored lights with a weird pattern set up to light the church. We were standing in a giant, beautiful, gothic cathedral with stained glass window--why the extra lights? It seemed overdone and reminded me of some of the over the top, super-hip Protestant churches I've been in.

For lunch we stopped at a cheap little street-food stand and bought some brats. They were SO good compared to the pizza in Italy! 

After St. Stephen's we visited the Belvedere museum where I was able to see one of my favorite paintings by Gustav Klimt--The Kiss. Klimt was from Vienna so there were several of his paintings in the museum. After the Belvedere we walked three miles back to our apartment to get ready for dinner. We realized last night that most people seem to dress up for dinner here. We were the only people who weren't dressed nice in the restaurant we ate at last night even though it was inexpensive. 

The weather here has been perfect. Today it was in the 60s and sunny. If it is this nice tomorrow we might go back to the park we walked through today on our way back from the museum. 

So far German is the hardest language to read, pronounce, or understand and Mark and I have both found it quite humorous. The words all have way too many letters! Also, we both keep accidentally saying "thank you" in Italian instead of English or German.