A Night at the Ballet

We have done so much in the last couple days! My posts have been long lately, with lots of pictures. Sorry, but here you go:


My Favorite Building
My favorite building in Vienna is called Stephansdom. It's right by the shopping/restaurant center of town, so we have walked past it a lot, and I want to take pictures every time because I love it so much! It's in the process of being cleaned right now, and I'm not sure how I feel about it because I love the old black look.

Yesterday we took a tour of the catacombs, and unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures. But I saw the bones of thousands of people who died of the black plague in Vienna. The bodies were stored in a mass grave underground. Later, prisoners were forced to move the skeletons in another room and stack the bones like wood, so it's basically a room packed with bones. Of course I was ok with the sight of bones, but I couldn't get over the thoughts of breathing the air in which the bones are currently decomposing. Gross.

Today we climbed to the top of the Stephansdom tower. It was actually harder for me than the Eiffel Tower...I think it's because I've been walking more in this city. Ale and I are exhausted at the end of every day but it's worth it!

Dinner Party

Ale's host mother, Elizabeth, invited us over for dinner. She is such a nice lady! I was warned that she tries to make her guests eat a lot, but I wasn't prepared for her forcefeeding techniques. The food was very good, but she was the one who put it on our plates and she didn't know when to stop! 

It was very interesting to be in the home of a local. We had a great dinner conversation about health care, families and politics. We are adults! Ale and I have been lucky with hanging out with locals. We met Lloyd in England, Stephan in Holland, and now Elizabeth in Austria. And Brenna will basically be a local by the time we get to Italy, so she can explain to us the intricacies of Italian culture!

Orange is Elizabeth's favorite color. My shirt matched her room.

So did her shirt. And her necklace.

Art Museum

Today I went to Belvedere Museum and I saw a Van Gogh! And a Monet and Manet! And Klimt's most famous painting, The Kiss," which was painted in this city! I wasn't allowed to take any pictures at the museum, but it was really cool. Take my word for it. I am just so happy that I could see these paintings, and listen to the audioguides. I learned a lot about impressionism and the painters. I wish I could say that I had a Brenna-David experience, but I can say that I love all these artists. I love Van Gogh. So much.

Opera House Tour

Ale and I went on a tour of the opera house, which is a main attraction in Vienna.

This tapestry took 20 women 6 years to finish. It covers the walls of an intermission room.

The Ballet!
We went to see Don Quixote tonight! I felt like a little girl because I was so excited to see the pretty costumes and impressive technique. There were so many times that I just wanted to make an audible "Mmmmmm" because everything was so good. It wasn't even hard to make it through the 3 hour performance. I haven't been to a ballet besides The Nutcracker for a long time. Ale and I were both very glad that we went!

Getting ready for the ballet:

Walking to the ballet (we probably annoyed everyone around us with the amount of pictures we took today, but everything was so epic we had to document it!)

The opera house at night:

The seating was arranged similar to seating in Shakespeare times. The rich people get seats up high and the common folk get super cheap tickets to stand up the whole time. Our feet hurt but we saw a top notch production for only 4 euro!

There was an older Italian man near us who kept yelling "Bravo!" throughout the performance. It was great. The world needs more people like that.

There were 2 intermissions, and each was about 25 minutes long. The opera theater has huge, elaborate intermission rooms to hang out in.

Sometimes at BYU we would do this thing called benching. The more casual, the better. But tonight we thought we would have a more formal benching session.

Butterfly House

I learned today that butterflies are extremely agile and fast! I took about 100 pictures and only a few of them are good. I wish I got a video of myself literally chasing butterflies around to get good shots.

Random Pictures

The shoes and dress are made of chocolate!

This is Sacher cake. It's a Viennese original so I had to try it. It didn't really taste like cake to me because it was kinda bitter, so I didn't like it. But it was good to try.

Emily McFarland is my favorite sister-in-law.

Auf Wiedersehen! Loch Sloy!