Ahhh, the Opera!!!!!

Day 43. After encouragement from Laura and Chris I decided to make a day trip to Salzburg before continuing onto Vienna, and Luke decided he would join me. We got up and got some breakfast, packed our bags, said see you soon to Chris (Hopefully in Prague), and were on our way. Once again the countryside is beautiful, you just can’t beat the hills, churches, small towns and mountains. It’s too picturesque. We arrived in Salzburg, the home of the Sound of Music and Mozart (among other things of course)! Luke was planning on staying for a couple nights, and I was continuing onto Vienna, but I stored my things at his hostel and off we went to explore the town very unsure of what we would see/do, but confident we would make it a great day. Not but 6 steps outside our hostel we stumbled upon what sounded like a parade. Upon further investigation (we joined in the march for several blocks) it was a protest of sorts. We weren’t really sure how to feel about it as neither of us could read German, but it seemed alright to us and they didn’t play angry music so we guessed it to be legit. We broke off from the riot/protest/parade and found ourselves in the Mirabell Palace and Gardens. It’s a beautiful garden (smelled absolutely wonderful and had super cool fire flowers) with a fantastic view of the cities castle (I love castles!). We also found some sort of hippie-ish meeting complete with rainbows and stuffed animals chained to a tree… awesome! Moving on from the lush gardens we stumbled upon Mozart’s house! Not the house where we was born (we saw that later), but the house where he lived for several years now turned into a museum. We saw Mozart’s piano and his actual sheet music and listened to Mozart’s Fantasy and Sonata in C Minor: K 457 from an interactive computer (which only furthers my desire to play the piano!).  The best part about the Mozart house was that it was all free (although we weren't entirely sure if we were supposed to pay or not) and totally spontaneous, yippee! Across the canal and towards the city center we saw Mozart’s birthplace and I had an amazing herring sandwich for lunch. We then walked towards the Residence where we stumbled upon a Mozart concert that was very cheap that was going to be starting in 45 minutes. Perfect! We were both stoked on Mozart from seeing his house so we were in. The concert was great, definitely not what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised all the same. It was in a very small and intimate space that was great for music and started out with demonstrations of old instruments used in the renaissance. After 4 or so instruments the actual concert started. It was a woman playing compositions from Johann Ernst Eberlin and Wolfgang Mozart on a harpsichord piano (The type of piano Mozart would have been using). She played music Mozart wrote when he was 5 and 8 years old, wow! She was excellent and after the initial shock of how the harp piano sounded, I grew accustomed to the foreign sound and enjoyed the concert very much (although it was making me nod off just a little). After the performance we wanted to go see the Festung Hohensalzburg Fortress, a massive castle on the hillside originally built in 1077! Inside we were treated to a marionette museum, state rooms, an audio guided tour through the history of the castle, some exhibits (the swords were cool and there was an actual chastity belt complete with teeth!), and best of all the most impressive and amazing view of the Alps yet. Seriously, I was lost for words. It was such a perfectly clear day and the Alps were mind-blowing. SO COOL. We stared at them for ages both just in complete awe. We ate some lollies (candy) and took lots of pictures as we had the city below us and the mountains above us, trying to ingrain the image in our minds forever. We also saw the Sound of Music convent, a Lord Voldemort statue (no joke… ok maybe a little, but seriously), a golden orb with a man about to jump, and perfectly huggable giant pickles/cucumbers. Haha, Luke and I had a lot of fun in Salzburg and to celebrate we had an awesome seafood dinner with wine (we were still stoked about the sandwiches earlier), although they tricked us about the price. After walking back to the hostel and getting directions to where I was going in Vienna and skyping for a bit (Sorry again babe!), I once again had to rush to the train station and just caught my train. I am a pro at last minute, you would think by now I would be able to get to a station early but that's just not my style. Salzburg was great, lots of culture, not crowded, nice weather, impressive buildings, good food, great music - I am shocked more people don’t go there. Ah well, yippee for me and onto Vienna!

Day 44. I found my hostel without too much trouble and was definitely ready for bed as soon as I was all checked in. I woke  up still tired (Nothing new there) and decided I wanted a lazy morning. I skyped Anthony, then got myself cleaned up, organized, and good to go. Vienna doesn’t have any free walking tours (super lame), so I just donned my adventure bag and was out the door. I walked for about 20 or so minutes when I realized I knew absolutely nothing about Vienna other than they had amazing opera and a superb music hall that Japan copied. Wohoo, go me (I have really begun relying on the walking tours in all the cities I go to. They tell you all the history and show you the sights and are just so great)! Ah well, the greatest adventures are those unplanned eh?  There was no other direction to go but onward, so onward I went and I quickly formed my initial thoughts on Vienna. One: Vienna is a very nicely laid out city with really old stone buildings everywhere that has been converted into a thriving metropolis/city on the lower levels of all the buildings (apart from the old town). And Two: Vienna has SO many churches and museums, holy cow; I went into 6 churches today and saw many more in the distance! Today was another shorts day and I walked down one of the main streets taking in the atmosphere of the city. Busy, but not overly so. I snagged some delicious carrot juice pressed from fresh carrots and continued walking towards the Museum Quartier. I was slightly overwhelmed by all the museums, not to mention I knew nothing about which ones I would want to go inside/would be worth my time and money, so I went into a couple to see what they were and then moved away from the main quartier area. I walked up to another two massive museums by an impressive statue, one with a name I could never hope to pronounce (Kunsthistorisches Museum) and another museum with 4 pleasant pictures of a butterfly, an old doll, rocks, and some bones with a sign about dinosaurs being back. Guess which museum I decided to go into? Yup, I went inside what I found out to be the Natural History Museum (the four pictures is what really got me). Remember when I went into that Museum in Dublin with all the animals? Picture that but times it by 20 and then give it the world taxidermist award for 2012. So cool!! First off I there were rooms filled with crazy rocks and jewels (and when I say filled think rows and rows and rows of rocks), and then I went upstairs to a monkey room! Monkey’s from all over the world!! I want to hold a monkey (I might have decided that either this trip or my next trip I am going to make a point to see monkeys in the wild/hold a monkey)!  But that’s not all, seven rooms later I came to the bird rooms!! Gah! SO MANY BIRDS!!! FOUR rooms of birds!! Big birds, small birds, colorful birds, birds of prey, extinct birds, birds with crazy feathers! I love birds! Another four rooms after that I came to the bug rooms, all the spiders were not my favorite, but the butterflies they had, oh the butterflies!! Babe!! So many, and all so different and so colorful and superb! You would have died here babe! But that’s not all because right after that there was a microscope room where you got to see the bugs and butterflies and other things up close, awesome! I left the museum and walked across the street to the Hofburg. It was very impressive and I tried to go inside, but decided to explore elsewhere first as it was such a nice day (and I needed a card or something to go into the area I tried to enter).  After the Hofburg I walked to the Stephansdom, the massive and tiled cathedral here in Vienna. It was beautiful on the inside with colored sheets covering the windows to give it a beautiful rainbow glow on the inside. I did a little window shopping as I tried to find another Mozart house and eventually wound my way through the city to the Opera House. Ahh the Opera!! I was so excited to see a performance! I arrived 80 minutes before the show started to get a ridiculously cheap standing ticket (only 4 euros!), but I was promptly turned away and kicked out of the building as I was in shorts…. Failblog. I didn’t realize you had to be in long pants to even enter the building, buy a ticket and see a show. Hmm, well it would have been about a 30 minute walk back to my hostel and then 30 minutes back, which was cutting it pretty close. So I decided to go back to the shopping area and buy some super cheap colored pants. I wanted a bright green pair, but failing to find those I settled on bright blue (I tried them on, bought them, and then changed in the store dressing rooms. I was worried someone would think I stole them!). I quickly hurried back to the Opera with about 30 minutes to spare, but instead of a standing ticket I waiting in line for a student ticket and got the best seat in the house that was unsold for 15 euros (5^th row baby!). The shows were fantastic, I got to see Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci (Der Bajazzo) and the orchestra unbelievable. They even had English subtitles on a little screen in front of all the seats so I could follow what was being sung in Italian. I didn’t realize it was going to be two different shows, so at intermission when the first one finished I almost left. Luckily the cloakroom lady looked shocked as I asked for my bag and said, “You’re leaving?!” Well, not any more I’m not, thank you! The second Opera was even better than the first, and I walked back home happy as a fiddle and starving (I forgot to buy ingredients for dinner and all the stores closed at 8pm). I stopped from some noodles and then passed out!