Day 3 - May 18th - St. Stephen's Cathedral and Stadt Park

        We met the group at the center of the city, Stephensplatz, around 11am, then we went through St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It was very colorful when we went in, vibrant blue, purple, and pink.

         Then I looked up and realized all the windows, even the stained-glass ones, were covered with bright blue and pink cellophane, and that there were club/dance-like electric lights mounted up on the high wall - weird.

       After we walked around there for a little while, we walked past the oldest church in Vienna

      
    on our way to the canal where there’s some cool street art and graffiti while we waited for the    right time for our catacomb tour. We also got gelato there, which was wonderful.

        Then we went back and took a tour through the catacombs (sorry, no pictures allowed). They were very creepy and ollllldddd. Kaitlyn was freaked out more by the coffins of recent-ish bishops and stuff than of the ancient stacked bones of Black Plague victims. At first we walked around some Habsburg coffins and sarcophagi, then we went to the part of the catacombs where whole skeletons were laying haphazardly in pits and rock floors, having been tossed there when so many died at the same time of the plague. After one room was full, they bricked it up and started on another, gross…. When we emerged from the land of the dead, we took on the challenge to climb four-hundred stairs to the middle of the tallest tower. I very nearly died…. no joke. The stairs were so narrow and winding tightly and neverendingly. People coming down would try to flatten themselves against the outer wall so we could try to squeeze past on the inner column. My legs and lungs were burning so badly I didn’t think they’d last much longer. At the top there was a gift shop (it just occurred to me that they would have to haul all that gift shop crap up there by climbing those awful narrow steps, and the worker there would have to climb it every dang day - yikes! unless there’s another entrance, which is entirely possible), and the view was incredible.

This is before we started climbing, we were completely unaware of the terrifying ordeal before us..... :)

         

         On the way down, someone was trying to pass us on their way up, so I was on the extreme inside and my feet slipped out from under me. Thankfully, we were at the part where there’s a little room off to the side, so there was a small landing with a railing around it. I was holding onto the railing from below and was hanging by just my hands for a second, it was slightly terrifying. 

        

After surviving our climb

        
          After we all came down, we took the U-bahn to the Nascht Market where they sell a bunch of touristy stuff like scarves, bags, clothes, sunglasses, jewelry, wall sheets, etc, as well as a food section where they sell basically everything. Alan brought us here so we’d know how to get there for the flea market on Saturday morning, which is something we were all excited to see. We walked through it all, then bought some food. I got my first Doner Kebab, and it was really good. We ate in a cute little grass-less park/courtyard thing, then we just sat there and talked for a while.

          After eating, we walked to Stadt Park and to the Johann Strauss statue/monument. It’s pretty famous.

    

Also, there was a lot of PDA going on here...

           We talked to an older guy dressed up in old-fashioned clothes selling tickets to the opera or a concert that night. He was really interesting to talk to. He was funny and liked to talk a lot, he even spoke some Mandarin to Nicole.

          After that, we walked around a little more and met some slack liners in a park close by. Lori likes slack lining, so we all stopped and she did that a few times. After that, we went our separate ways, and we hostel girls went exploring around St. Stephan’s to a Navajo Indian store and to an awesome grocery store where I got some delicious Milka chocolate bars, Pringles, cashews, etc, so I could survive every day without eating regularly since we have much more important things to do than keep a regular schedule. Then we headed home and eventually  went to bed…. sort of. These girls stay up until all hours of the night!!