Life of a Single Married Lady

Our last two days in Austria have flown by! Yesterday we started by visiting Esterhazy Castle in Eisenstadt. The castle's origins are from the 13th century, but it was expanded over time. In 1622 the Esterhazy family took possession of the palace and it has been held by the family ever since! Haydn was the palace musician here, and as such there is a Haydn museum inside. I couldn't take pictures, but trust me when I say the museum's design choices were questionable...wallpaper full of Haydn's face is not exactly what I would have chosen. We then moved on to the Vienna Central Cemetery, which is one of the largest cemeteries in the world and completely amazing. It contains 3.5 million people's remains, and was shelled with 500 bombs in WWII because Vienna was the seat of the Gestapo at one point. It contains big Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant sections, and more recently has added sections for Muslim, Orthodox, Buddhist, and Mormon folks. We specifically saw th...

We're still wandering Vienna! On our way to the cathedral we stopped by a quiet little square that is now a very desirable place to live (it has quiet and  parking!). The buildings used to all be part of the old Jesuit church here, but are residences now; the church still stands and is connected to the local University. We also passed Vienna's statue of Gutenberg, to whom I owe most of the childhood I spent reading. Mural on the wall of the old Jesuit complex Gutenberg! Then we went for a tour of Stephansdom, or St. Stephan's Cathedral. It's as big as a soccer field, was originally built in 1147 in the Gothic style, and was restored in the 1600-1700s with Baroque influences. The north tower, however, was never finished due to a lack of money. Mozart is buried there and his kids baptized there, and the archbishop lived right across the square. The Nazi SS actually had headquarters right by our hotel which is very close, so this area was heavily bombed. When...

A sleep-in day, hooray! We needed it though, because we walked another 8 miles today. Our day began with a bus tour around Vienna and a walk around the Belvedere gardens. Imagine the time is 1683; the place is Vienna; the antagonists hail from the Ottoman Empire. You're Prince Eugene of Savoy, a military man loyal to the Habsburgs, so you get crafty and save the city of Vienna from the Ottomans' months-long siege. You're pretty pleased with yourself, so you decide to build a palatial complex in just 2 years...and to rub it in, you make sure the roof line looks like the tents of the Ottomans you've defeated! Interestingly, Vienna kept Turkish coffee around after the siege broke and  their bakers invented the croissant, which is shaped like the half-moon of the Ottoman flag. Upper Belvedere from the gardens Sphinxes represent both mental and physical strength, as was shown in breaking the siege of Vienna On to Sc h ö n brunn Palace! This was the summer country...