Sunday, April 15, 2012


First Stop: Vienna!

Mike and Jolyne picked me up in Klagenfurt and whisked me away for a whirlwind, 8-day, tour of 4 European cities/countries. It was a trip of a lifetime as I'm sure you'll discover from the pictures. We stayed in beautiful hotels, had wonderful guided tours, and ate and drank like royalty!

I would label more churches and statues and stuff if I could...but we saw so much! Just accept that it's really famous and beautiful :)





We made up for 2 1/2 months of no Starbucks! The Europeans think I'm a heretic, but nothing beats Starbucks.






This building is magical.... The Vienna Museum of Natural History. http://www.nhm-wien.ac.at/

After exploring the museum I decided I'm going to finish my Biology degree and move to Austria and be an English-language curator here. It was that fabulous. Definitely a science nerd paradise, so I felt right at home. Above is the building from the outside and below is the main staircase area.



Rooms upon rooms of innumerable species of every class of animal, both living and extinct. It would take me weeks to explore this haven in the detail that I would like, but I spent a fair few hours roaming these beautiful rooms!


Look dad! It's just like home!




Below are THE Microbiologists...for you Dr. Gaudin! They also had a huge display of primates (Kauffman) and I visited a small botanical exhibit of rare plants (Ryburn).


Found one for you Dr. Kauffman! I remember taking it to show the scope of the room... By this point I think I was nearly in tears from excitement and love.



I also visited the Vienna Museum of Modern Art. I took a lot of pics, but I'll just post a couple so you get the general idea...







I dragged Jolyne into the fantastic Albertina art museum. They currently have an Impressionism exhibit, so that special collection along with their permanent collection allowed me to see works by the masters: Picasso, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, Redon, Degas, Gauguin.



Below is our hotel room!

(Just kidding, I think that's some Hapsburg furniture in the Albertina museum)

I was almost in tears! Here are a couple examples of what we saw:


Edgar Degas, Harlekin und Columbine, ca. 1886. Belvedere, Vienna © Belvedere, Vienna
Degas
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of a Young Girl (Elisabeth Maître), 1879. Albertina, Vienna - Collection Batliner © Albertina, Vienna, Peter Ertl


Renoir, one of my favorites. I got a super cool poster of this with the dates of the exhibit and names of all the artists.

Vienna by night:





Anddddd the food of Vienna:










Vienna was absolutely amazing and I think highly under-rated. It's hard to pick favorites out of all the wonderful things we saw and did, but Vienna was definitely an impressive and enjoyable city.




2 comments:

  1. But no pictures of the primates? A travesty!

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  2. This post is much improved with the addition of primates!

    ReplyDelete