vienna

For our long Easter weekend (Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays), Daniela, Jelena, and I headed to Vienna or "Wien".

We arrived Friday evening and had an amazing dinner at Restaurant "ü". Whatever it was called in German translated to "cheesy dumplings with fried onions". It was yummy!

Saturday morning we set off on a walking tour of the city. We saw the oldest church in Vienna where they were having choir practice for Easter service, so we stopped and listened to the choir for a little while.

Old town 

Where Mozart lived: 

Horse and carriages everywhere: 

Stephansdom:

We passed a hotel with a huge crowd outside. It turns out that Justin Bieber was supposedly staying there before his concert Saturday night and was expected to come out. These two girls got Bieber fever but we didn't see him: 

Albertina 

Pinocchio 

The Spanish Riding School: 

We stopped at a cafe for tea and lunch: 

Parliament 

Hundertwasserhaus: 

Dinner at Specht: 

Wiener Schnitzel:

We made friends with the bartender who made us these delicious drinks called pipelines: 

The next morning was Easter. The breakfast at the hotel included colored hard boiled eggs for the occasion: 

Another cafe stop included "feel good" and "good mood" tea: 

Then we went to church at St. Stephen's cathedral. It was a beautiful mass: 

Next stop was Schönbrunn palace: 

It was so cold and raining/snowing we had to get gluwein at the Easter Market to keep us warm:

Easter market included lots of pretty hand painted eggs:

The three of us in front of the palace:

The rest of the day we toured the inside of the palace. The inside and outside gardens reminded me so much of Versailles in Paris. Then we had dinner and called it an early night so we could wake up at 4am for our early morning flight back to Zurich.

Happy Easter!