Day 4 - May 19th - Nascht Market, Belvedere, Prater

(Warning: this is a long post, almost as long as this day felt...)

   Today we woke up early to catch the U-bahn to the part of Vienna where there’s this massive flea market every Saturday morning, it’s called the Nascht Market. It was so big and crowded that we walked around for two hours and still couldn’t possibly have looked at everything.

        

           I bought some souvenirs for my family and friends. I expected there to be more cheap stuff and more variety like in China, but the ‘commercial’ end of the Market all had the same stuff: same scarves, sunglasses, jewelry, clothes, and bags. The other end, the flea market, wasn’t much more than an outside DI or garage sale. I’m not too fantastic at finding treasures among the trash. Some of the other girls found some pretty cool stuff though.
    
       Around lunchtime we met up with Alan and his family at the Karlsplatz, then we all trundled onto the U-bahn again to go to the Belvedere, which is apparently one of the main attractions in Vienna. It actually was built as a summer palace for Prince Eugene of Savoy.

         While there, we started in the Lower Belvedere, the building where they had reception desk, cloakroom, and a cool Gold exhibit. We paid for both the gold exhibit and the Upper Belvedere permanent display. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take any pictures inside, because there was some pretty cool stuff. Actually, my favorite part of the gold exhibit was the architecture and decoration of the rooms they were housed in. They were incredibly rich and detailed, with beautiful paintings and murals on the walls and statues and stuff everywhere. After we were done with that, we meandered up to the Upper Belvedere. We walked slowly because the grounds of the Belvedere are beautiful.

       There were fountains, hedges, flowers, and paths everywhere; we had a pretty fun photoshoot as we walked. 

          

           Once we finally made it to the main building, we were blown away with how beautiful it was. The Belvedere is the museum that houses Klimt’s The Kiss, so we were way excited to see that. This museum was packed with beautiful, old paintings, some of which were quite famous. I decided the Kiss was my favorite - typical, I know - but it’s just such a striking piece. It was huge, much bigger than I thought it would be, and you could just feel the emotion oozing out of it. Too bad we couldn’t take pictures in here either, because I’m sure I’ll forget what I saw there. After walking and shopping and museum-shuffling for hours and hours, I was tired and hungry, so I left the other girls still in the museum and I went back to the lower Belvedere to find Heather and Suzanne, sure that they had managed to find some sort of delicious food. I wasn’t disappointed, they were sitting on a nice bench next to the museum café, just chilling in the sunshine. I bought a delicious-looking but mediocre-tasting chocolate cake and sat and ate with them on their lovely bench. We were waiting for quite a while for the other girls to show up, but it was nice to just hang out there in the warm sun. It was so nice, apparently, that I got quite the sunburn from it. Since it was my first sunburn of the summer, it was pretty red and tender for the next few days. I even wore a newly acquired scarf to hide it the next day…

   
        After we all met up again, Heather and Suzanne went back to their hotel while the rest of us walked to the famous apartment building built by Hundertwasser with no straight lines; even the ground was uneven. It was pretty cool, but there were people everywhere! I couldn’t stand to live there.

   

This sign pretty much captures the essence of the entire block where this famous apartment is.

       Then we all went to the Prater, an awesome amusement park in the middle of a wooded park. There we finally ate some delicious dinner. Kaitlyn, Lori, and I all got something different, then split it all three ways. It was sooo good.

       We almost lost Stevie at this point because I didn’t hear her say she was going to the bathroom. By the time we had chosen a place to eat and were all seated, we realized she wasn’t with us and we didn’t know where she went. We decided not to worry yet, she might wander around where we were, since we hadn’t actually gone too far away. Eventually she did find us, and we all ate like kings. After we had finished eating, we walked around the corner to check out the actual park.

First view of the park is dominated by this behemoth

     
        The first thing we did was have Kaitlyn hold all our stuff and take pictures while we (Nicole, Stevie, Lori, and I) rode the Prater Turm, the world’s tallest carousel swing ride, because Kaitlyn’s stomach wasn’t up to it.

     

Anxiously waiting in line - how awesome is it that we were at the very front!

Awesome tickets, we wanted to keep them

      

      
 

            It was so much fun! Lori and I shared a seat and we were laughing and screaming the whole time. I was brave enough to carefully clutch my phone while taking a picture of the sunset through the famous ferris wheel over the whole city with mountains in the background - it was gorgeous and surreal.

Phone camera picture

       We were so glad we were brave enough to do it, and that Kaitlyn could take pictures for us. Once we were down, we wandered through the rest of the park taking lots of pictures but not riding any more rides - they were fairly expensive.

    
       We didn’t even do the famous ferris wheel because it was 11 Euros! So as the sun was setting we finally headed for home after the longest, best day of our trip so far… Needless to say, I had no problem sleeping like a baby that night (or any night for that matter).