Austria

austria was beautiful. we spent two and a half days there, june 2nd in vienna, the 3rd, my birthday, we took a day trip to the to salzburg, and we spent half the day of the 4th back in vienna before leaving by train to budapest.

we had originally really wanted to go to austria, but it wasn't fitting into our itinerary so we cut it. however, we are moving faster than we had thought we would and realized we could fit it in. i am so glad we did. i think it is THE most beautiful place we have been -- i would say even more beautiful than paris. its more quaint then paris and even off the beaten path, every street we walked was adorable.

our day in vienna was spent walking around the main town square area. all the buildings are so pretty, it really all looked like it was just out of a fairy tale. toward evening street performers begin setting up their acts in different areas of the square, one after another. we watched a bunch of groups from magicians to break dancers to a man playing music on crystal glasses to a woman playing classical pieces on the piano very, very well (she rolls our her entire grand piano into the middle of the pedestrian only street and she had quite a large and impressed audience).

the following day we went to salzburg for the sole purpose of taking the sound of music tour for my birthday! it was a great birthday and it was such a fun tour... you are taken in a huge goofy bus (every inch painted with sound of music murals) all over the city and into the country side. it is all based around the movie, but really the movie was filmed in all the most beautiful sights in salzburg so it was just a great sightseeing excursion as well. we went all the way up into the mountains into the lake area and just like in vienna everything is just picture perfect! : )

on the 4th we were back in vienna and spent our remaining half day at the schobrunn palace. this was the summer palace of austria's royal family and is similar to versailles but with more to do. we didn't do the tour of the palace, but instead enjoyed the gardens (free!). we hiked up to the highest point of the gardens to a pretty "panorama gazebo" and then played in the hedge mazes! i had never seen one in real life and it was like being in alice's wonderland. everything at the palace was manicured and beautiful and without flaw.