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Monday, May 3, 2010

Vienna, Austria: A Palace or Two

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to my palace.
You are cordially invited to my semi-weekly royal balls. Please use either stairway to enter the Grand Ballroom.
Just try to not get lost in the courtyard on your way.
Goodness, can you even imagine? Actually, it's hard not to imagine when you're visiting the Schoenbrunn Palace. The second you step foot on the grounds, you'll be dreaming of fairytales as if you were a little girl.
Unlike the secluded castle we visited in Germany, Schoenbrunn is inside the city itself and has pretty views of Vienna from every angle.
Then again, who needs views of the city when you have these gorgeous gardens all to yourself? We could have wandered around the palace forever and been perfectly happy.
Ah, but then the sun was setting and we had a concert to attend at a different palace. Much smaller but still lovely, the Palais Auersperg is located close to the city center. Mozart performed at this palace when he was only six-years-old and now his music is performed there on a regular basis.
(Above Auersperg pictures from the LA Times)
This concert featured a 40-person orchestra with opera singers and ballerinas--a sampling of Viennese culture geared toward tourists. But hey, we were tourists and the concert was amazing, so it worked like a charm.

The next morning, we hopped on an early train to the most beautiful village in the entire world. Hallstaat is coming up next, followed closely by Italy!

8 comments:

  1. It's incredible to think how much money it would cost to build that ginormous palace! Holy cow! It was especially impressive to see the progressive pictures. It seemed huge in the first one, then you back out and see the two giant staircases on either side, THEN you see the enormously huge courtyard!! Wow. Amazing. Haha and the second "smaller" palace is still huge, but seems small in comparison. What an amazing thing to see!

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  2. How grand! I am so in love with Austria and for this very fairytale like reason! I want to go there so bad. You are SO lucky you got to spree through there and visit castle after castle (sigh) ROMANTIC! Glad you get a trip down reminiscent lane while catching us all up on your amazing Europe trip :)

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  3. I love the gardens! I hope you don't' mind if I steal your idea of breaking your trip up into small pieces and blogging it one post at a time. My trip to D.C. needs to be thoroughly documented. At least I think so =)

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  4. WOW! I am loving your honeymoon. Dang, Why didn't I think of going to Europe on my honeymoon?!?!? Somehow, vegas just didn't stack up to VIENNA FREAKING AUSTRIA! Those palaces are really spectacular. I am blown away by the architecture in Europe. Very cool. Can't wait till the next honeymoon post.

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  5. Tobi-I think that's a great idea! It's so much less overwhelming and more organized to break a big trip up, in my opinion. Then again, it might drive others crazy that it's intermixed with the rest of my posts, but oh well! That's what labels are for, right? :-)

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  6. wouldn't mind a tea party there either...wowzer!

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  7. How amazing. I can't even imagine how it would be to actually live there! It is gorgeous.

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