Vienna - Saturday

Vienna is like walking around in a gigantic, incredibly ornate wedding cake. It's all white and every surface is covered with some sort of decoration. The best word to describe it is GRAND. Everything is huge and it smells like dessert everywhere. The "fruit" pictured here isn't fruit. It's marzipan carved into fruit shapes. Could have fooled me. 

We went to the Hapsburg Palace (more like a complex - it's enormous), where the very loved Empress Elizabeth lived. She was a very interesting woman - anorexic (the first known monarch to be) and exercise obsessed. She hated court life and ceremony, so she entertained herself by traveling all over the place and writing provocative verse. She was ironically killed by an anarchist who was making a statement against the monarchy, not knowing she also hated the monarchy.

I am traveling with Kezia and her friend, Jason, from Michigan Business School. Jason has friends in Vienna who were wonderful tour guides. They walked us all over the city to see the amazing architecture and took us to inexpensive places to eat that were fabulous. 

I love Austrians and the German language. 

The Viennese decided to move all of their museums to a modern cultural complex called The Museum Quartier so that they would all be in one place. Hispters and hoodlums hang out all around it - that's who the people lounging on the yellow blocks are. They paint the blocks a different color every year. 

Some highlights - our hotel had heated bathroom floors; I saw a horse drawn carriage driver in full imperial costume ... texting while driving; and I'm pretty sure I was meant to travel via private luxury carriage pulled by horses. 

Saturday evening we went to a wine and cheese festival in the park that was a lot of fun. Lots of Austrian pride. This, clearly, is where Kezia and I found our stark white, chiseled friend. 

We are now in Istanbul. I can't wait to get into this city - it's so interesting already. More to come. Auf Wiedersen!