My Travel Adventures

On our last day in Vienna, the gang finally acknowledged our disparate interests and split up. My mum and Niky went shopping while my dad, Naty, and I went to see the Gustav Klimt artworks at the Belvedere Palace. We found a lot more than Klimt, however, the major discovery of the day being that perhaps a quarter of the exposition on the second floor is the work of Czech painters. After a terrifying visit to Karlskirche, which included an elevator ride to the ceiling of the dome, we reunited at the  Schönbrunn Palace, once the summer residence of the Habsburg family.  It happens to house the oldest zoo in the world.  Our visit to Vienna ended in utter exhaustion at the palace  café , where we outlasted all other visitors and only left at nightfall.

We started our second day in Vienna with a visit to the Wiener Stadtpark, where we saw the statues of some of Vienna’s greats: Johann Strauss, Franz Schubert, Franz Lehár, and a group of penguins (I am not sure of the history behind this monument). We continued to Karlskirche, after which we ditched my sisters at a café and visited the Secession Building. To our disappointment, the only Klimt there was one single permanent installation and the remaining art was mostly contemporary.