Salzburg, Austria: July 25th

(Friday)

Sounds of Music bike tour:

The Frauline Maria bike tour was the BEST TOUR OF THE TRIP!!! Alex and I had so much fun! We were like giddy little kids the whole time! Our tour guide was so nice and enthusiastic. She encouraged us to be our normal, goofy selves by suggesting picture poses to do at each site we visited that was featured in the Sound of Music movie. We also got to sing the songs as we biked around the beautiful city of Salzburg! Our tour guide lady had a little boom box that played the songs with. It was pretty sweet! I can't wait to watch the movie again to better recognize the places that we were able to see in real life!!

Don't know how I had the opportunity to represent Frauline Maria! Haha, nobody else would take the hat! 

On our bikes we had cards with pictures of the sites from the movie and also lyrics to a lot of he songs!! :)

The nunnery that Frauline Maria was at.

Frolicking through the fields to the tune of "the hills are alive... with the sound of music!"

Stopped to get some fresh milk along the way! Soo good!

Taking pictures while riding a bike is a lot harder than you would think...

Visiting the Von Trapp's house!!

My favorite spot... Featuring Lesiel and Ralph! :) 

Look familiar? "You are sixteen going on seventeen!"

Beautiful view of Salzburg!

I loved, loved, loved singing and biking through Salzburg, Austria! What a dream!!

Vienna, Austria: July 24th

(Thursday)

Today we went to a market and tried some falafel. I thought it would taste like a meatball, but it definitely didn't. Let's just say that we weren't he biggest fans. The market was really cute though!

Hofburg Palace:

Then we went on a tour of the Hofburg Palace! This is the complex of palaces where the Habsburg emperors lived. Pretty nifty! 

Vienna was nice, but I probably wouldn't plan to go back. (No offense, Vienna). We definitely felt like foreigners in this city! I don't know what gave away that we weren't from there, besides our accents, but so many people stared at us! It was also harder to feel super excited about Vienna because it had many similar sites as places we had been to in the past, just not quite as extravagant. It was nice to experience a new place and soak in a new culture for a little while. 

Continue readin for our favorite part of Austria!! :)

Vienna, Austria: July 23rd

The Opera House:

Vienna is known to be the world capital of classical music. That makes their opera house "one of the planet's premier houses of music," says our buddy and tour guide, Rick Steves. We took a tour of the building and were fascinated by the architectural history and all of the productions they've held there. It's sad, the main architect received a lot of negative feedback about the building's structure and people said it was dull and boring. Before the opera house was officially completed he committed suicide, which they assume was directly correlated with people giving him a hard time about the building. How sad is that?! Especially since people really admire the building now. Poor guy. 

Alex found herself a man on this trip!

St. Stephen's Cathedral

The Opera Concert!

The best part about our stay in Vienna was the Opera that we went to! It had everything... Classical music by an orchestra, opera singers, and dancing!! My favorite was the dancing and opera singers! There was a couple that did some Vienese dancing and it was so fun! I mostly enjoyed the male dancer who shamelessly pranced around doing high kicks, leaps, and the works! Forget about the Latin dancing, I found a new style that I need to get into now. I'm sure Andrew will be thrilled that I found a new hobby for us! Hahaha! After hearing the opera singers I also felt inspired to work on developing that talent as well. I'll start asap when I'm home in the states driving in my car, all by myself. This was such a fun, cultural, and motivating experience! :)

We couldn't take pictures of the performance, so here's what the venue looked like.

Switzerland to Austria: July 22nd

(Tuesday)

Today was an intense travel day!

We spent 9 hours on the train traveling from Düdingen, Switzerland to Vienna, Austria! I spent most of the time reading Insurgent, the second book in the Divergent series. It's really good! I also got to sleep and do some blogging. I think Alex and I asked each other "would you rather..." questions for a really long time back and forth as well! Haha, the things we do to entertain ourselves!

Sleeping beauty!

Vienna, Austria:

Once we arrived to Vienna later that night we easily found the place were staying at! (Woo hoo!!) The girlfriend of our host greeted us and pointed out some cool things to do in Vienna. She was really nice!

We knew that schnitzels are popular in that area so we went for a walk and found a restaurant called "Schnitzel" and figured that sounded promising! So we tried it for the first time! Honestly, it tasted like normal fried chicken to me. Still good though!!