Vienna Days 3 and 4

We started out going to Judenplatz to see the Holocaust memorial. It is very interesting and meaningful if you know what it represents.  It's thousands of books in a large cube shape with all the spines facing inward and you can't see any covers. It's meant to represent all the life stories of the holocaust victims that we will never know because they were ended so early.

 Our path then led us to Volksgarten where we took some pictures and sat for a little bit.

 (Mozart statue and Treble Clef flowers)

 Our main destination was the Kunsthistorische Museum. The building itself was an amazing work of art and is worth the visit just to see. All of the artwork and other items are just a bonus.

The museum also had some great works of art. The main entrance staircase leads to this amazing Hercules slaying the centaur statue by Canova (remember him? He was the one that did the cool triangle monument and statues in one of the churches we saw on the first day in Vienna that had a twin monument in Venice).

There were other awesome works of art as well. We got an audio guide here so it was interesting to hear some things that we wouldn't have noticed otherwise. For example, this painting of David with the head of Goliath is a cool painting but what makes it even more interesting is that the head of Goliath is actually a self portrait of the artist.

The next painting is a very famous religious painting but there is something particularly noteworthy about it...see if you can spot it:

You may or may not have noticed the little man on the bottom right corner of the picture standing next to a sign. This was also a self portrait of the artist and he is holding a sign identifying himself as the painter :-).

Here are some other things inside the museum that we enjoyed:

The Tower of Babel

 We loved the windblown material arching over her:

 Portrait of the young Empress Elizabeth (Natali thinks this is so cute)

We then headed to the Museum Quarter and went into the Leopold Museum, a modern art museum. The museum focused mostly on two artists: Klimt and Egon Schiele. They both have very unique styles of painting but we thought it was very interesting as well. Here is an example of a Schiele painting and also a few others we really liked from that museum.

Egon Schiele:

 We really loved these grapes haha. They made us hungry. The lines in this painting were just so beautiful and it looked so real.

The bottom floor of the museum was an exhibition that was created for the children that suffered through the Holocaust. All of the artwork is of faces of children, drawn from real pictures taken for concentration camp records. It was very sad going in and seeing the faces of all of these children that suffered so much. We found the drawing of this little boy to be particularly heart-wrenching.

We left the museum just in time for a huge street party on the main road. There were dozens of huge trucks that had music blasting and people dancing on and around them. The trucks were driving down the main road and each had a group of people walking alongside them while they danced or just walked. Natali probably would have joined in if I hadn't been there but we are old married people now so we just watched the youngins as they went by ;-). It was right in front of the Parliament building, which we thought was a little odd.


We had been recommended a restaurant called the Goulash Museum (not really a museum but a restaurant) and tried some more goulash. We were a little disappointed in the goulash but it was still good and is probably one of those things that you just have to try if you ever go to Austria. On a sad/side note, Natali saw this awesome hat store that she wanted to check out but when we were able to go back it was closed. Natali was really sad :(.

 We headed over to Stadtpark after dinner and walked around a little bit. We saw a bunch of homeless people that seemed to have all set up camp along a row of benches there. Each had a tarp and all of their belongings under their bench. It was kind of interesting to see them grouped together like that and the city allow them to do that. The main reason we went to the park was to see the golden statue of Johann Strauss. Natali wanted to see it so I can't even tell you any history or anything else about it.

 Day 4
Sundays are always tricky for us. Trying to find a church and get out to the church is sometimes complicated. Luckily in Vienna they had a ward that wasn't too far away from us, and it was an international ward so it was in English! After church we wanted to see the Belvedere Palace so we headed that way. We didn't go inside but just walked around the outside and enjoyed the gardens and the views. There were lots of fountains and a little breeze that made Natali's skirt flutter as she walked so we had to take lots of pictures of here dress flowing in the breeze.

 We had tried to go inside the National Library the day before but it was closed and we didn't go in the right entrance so we decided to try again. We got inside this time into one section of the library that had a large collection of books from floor to ceiling. Where there weren't any books there were paintings or elaborate decorations. Natali felt like Belle in Beauty and the Beast and just wanted to climb on one of the sliding ladders and start singing. With my help, she was able to restrain herself. It was pretty neat.

We had a little bit of time to spare before we had to go to the train station so we went to a little park and rested for about an hour. It was really nice just to sit there and talk and not have to do anything. Vacations are meant to be relaxing so it was nice to actually relax and not have to worry about where to go next or what we are going to eat. Sometimes it is nice to just sit in the park and read or talk.

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