Day 21: Touring Vienna (Part 1) and the State Opera

Although I love Paris and Florence immensely, I really wish I could stay in Vienna to work or study for an extended time. The city is so pleasant in every way -- cleanliness, politeness, culture, history, a perfect combination of old and new -- and I'm so glad I get to enjoy it for a couple more days.

After a morning of transit from Brno to Vienna, we started off our guided tour around 1:30 in the city centre, and moved around various parts of the Ringstrasse and its surroundings. My first impression of Vienna when I briefly stopped here a couple weeks ago was how clean and modern the city was, and that definitely still holds. I did get to appreciate a lot more of its history this time around. Vienna is so full of history around every corner and my professor made a great tour guide, pointing out origins of streets and monuments as well as the most important sites.

We first passed the Votive Church, then the University and took a quick look inside.

We also saw the Town Hall, and the Eurovision booths. From there, we passed by my favourite building in the city, the Parliament building.

I love that the central statue in front of the building is of Athena, the goddess of civilization and wisdom, and patroness of the first democratic city, Athens. It's a classic Athena pose, with Nike, the Goddess of Victory, in her hand. My inner Greek mythology nerd got very excited. In this particular statue, she is flanked by representations of Justice and the four rivers of the Habsburg Empire.

We then went through the Museum of Natural Sciences and the Museum of Fine Arts, both of which were grandiose palaces flanking a garden, which had a giant statue of Maria Theresia, with her generals and civil servants, in the centre.

Afterwards, we stopped at a café at Museum-Quartier to rest. It was a rather cold and cloudy day out, but luckily no rain. Otherwise, the walk was nice since the streets were so clean and wide and there were beautiful buildings everywhere. Also, Vienna has cute streetlights that show a couple instead of a single person walking.

After the half hour break, we headed to the State Opera House and finished off the tour at the Secession building.

Julie and I split off and got street food for dinner, eating it on a bench in the Burggarten, in front of this beautiful view of a monument to Mozart.

We walked over to pick up our tickets to the Vienna State Opera at 6, then went to the Café Mozart before our show started.

I had the most delicious dessert ever. It was just as good as it looks.

At 7, we took our seats for the opera show in the Vienna State Opera House. The show was La Cenerentola, a Cinderella story -- a simple but lighthearted show. Admittedly, musicals are more my thing; no effects can compare to Wicked's lighting and no opening can match Les Mis's. It was a different type of art though and I really enjoyed the music and experience. Our view from the side wasn't fantastic but I'm still very glad I got to see it. Certainly, it was the finest venue I'd ever been in.

Leaving the Opera House by night, we also got a wonderful view of downtown Vienna lit up.

To finish off the evening, we stopped the Café Museum for a warm drink before heading back to the hostel. Although the Café Mozart was more opulent, I preferred the cosier atmosphere in Café Museum. It made for a lovely, calming finish to our every eventful day.

Photos by Julie Zhang.