Philosopher's Way

Philosopher's way is a path way up in the hill on the other side of the river from us. This path way is where several great minds of Germany would walk up and down thinking or with colleagues in academic debate. Now it is one of the many tourist sights in Heidelberg. It is a beautiful path way that looks out to the old part of Heidelberg. It is really beautiful as you can see from the pictures here! Oh and it is fall time now - so the tress look amazing with all of the different colors.

We went on a date!

Last week we decided to go on a date! Not for any significant reason but just an excuse to get dressed up and go to a nice restaurant! I just wanted to show off these pictures. . But it was a good night! We went to this pretty nice Italian restaurant and we were able to successfully order in German.


One cultural thing that we have easily adapted to is taking our time after eating. Here people will get a coffee and sit for hours. Or when you finish your meal the waiter/waitress does not even check in with you to see if you "saved room for desert or just want your check". But you have to get their attention and then ask for the check. So even if you try to rush out of a place you usually have to wait about 15 minutes just to try to get their attention. However we have taken advantage of it. Now that we have the time and no need to rush, we have used our restaurant time as great quality time together. And this night was another really fun night spent together! Oh and it ended with some good games of Gin Rummy!

The night of walking

We forgot to add this huge dramatic story to our Night of the Museum section - but this will do!
So after we were done seeing all of the Museums in Vienna the time was about 1:15. A group of four of us (David, Jess and our friends Jim and Rachel) start walking down into the metro. All of us are ready to rest our tiered feet. In that day we went to the Cemetery and explored the Castle of Schoenbrunn. But we get down to the metro station just to find that the metro system is already closed! But no need to start to freak out yet because "hey guys, we can just take the street cars!" OF course we can, so we get out side find a stop for the nearest street car and of course the street cars stop at the same time the metro station does. So we all think "maybe a bus?" so we take a look a the bus schedual and none of the regualar buses are running. There are busses but they are all moving people to and from other museums - they are all working specificically for the Night of the Museums.
Now we are in a small rut, every form of public transportation that we know of is closed! So we were left with two options: Either get a taxi and split the cost, or walk.
We are all cheap and young so we thought walking was the best option.

The distance ended up on being about 3 miles - so it took us about 1 hour. We even ran for about 20 min, for some reason we thought that would be a good idea. We walked through some shady parts of town - but we made it safe and sound!
We were constantly checking our maps to make sure we were still going in the right direction. It really was a lot of fun. I think we all enjoyed ourselves and no one minded the walk!
It sure was some night :)

Vienna - Night of the Museums 2

This is one of many artifacts from ancient egypt exhibit in the Kunsthistorisches Museum.  This was one of our favorite museums. 
This is a marble statue from the Roman empire.  We're not sure of who's statue this is.
They had a lot of marble busts and statues but this one here was one of our favorites.  It is a bust of Julius Caesar.  David got really excited when he found it.  Haha
This is the inside of the museum.  It very well lit and again the architecture was a marvel in it's own right.

Vienna - Night of the Museums

To start off the night we got a sample of the Original Sacher Tort.  The Hotel in Sacher in Vienna created this famous Austrian chocolate cake.  We felt that this small sample was something we needed to get!  It was good, it really did not taste like any other chocolate cake we have had.  
The night of the Museums is an event where all of the museums in Vienna are open from 6pm-1am in one day and you can get into all of them just buy purchasing one pass for 11 Euro.  So this was a great deal and we really lucked out by being in town while this happens!  The first museum we saw was the Albertino Museum.  They had a huge Van Gogh exhibit with a total of 140 pieces of works.  All of the art for this exhibit was collected from several museums around the world (even the Los Angeles County Museum).  It was really neat to see, not only was it a huge collection but they displayed the pieces chronologically.  This showed his progression as an artist.  This picture is of the Natural History Museum and right across from it is an identical building which is he Kunsthistorisches Museum.
This is what it looked like inside the Natural History Museum and the Kunsthistorisches!!  They were covered with murals, statues, and tons of gold/marble embellishments.  It was so beautiful.  We enjoyed just admiring the inside of them.
This picture is for Noah (David' Nephew).  Noah is really into the movie Peter Pan and we thought of him and the crocodile from the movie when we saw this.  Then David started singing the crocodile song from the movie. ha ha
The Natural History Museum had a part which was filled with all of the animals.  Dinosaurs, Butterflies, Sharks, Fish, Snakes, Birds, even Cavemen!  We enjoyed walking around and seeing all of the different exhibits.

Vienna (part duex)

Us inside the concert hall.  This place was really pretty.  It had painted murals on the celling, marble statues of famous composers, golden statues of angels, etc.  It was unbelievable and the orchestra sound fantastic!   They played David's favorite symphony so the night was quite perfect.
These are the honorary graves of Beethoven and Mozart.  Right beside these two were several other honorary graves to Brahms, Shubert, and Strauss.  (These are famous composers of the classical and romantic period) 
After visiting the cemetary, a group of us decided to explore the city and try and find the Scholss Schonbrunn (which is a palace) and this is what we found.  We walked around and it had a lot of gardens that reminded us to the palace in Schwetzingen.  We walked around the palace and little did we know of what was to come next....
THIS!  All of us gasped in amazement!  It was breathtaking to say the least.  The grounds were huge.  They had a zoo in one side, a full maze & labrynth made of tall shrubs, several gazebos and cafe/restaurants.  It would probably take a full day to look at everything here.  We only had an hour but simply walking around the gardens was good enough for us.   We were more than glad that we decided to try and find this place. 
This is actually an "outtake" of the hand full of picture we tried to take.  Believe it or not, this is the best one.  Haha!  It was really windy so that made it difficult.  We like this one though.

Vienna (part 1)

We think this was a church but it was the first building we saw as we emerged from the subway. It was quite the sight as you can tell!  
This is the Musikverein Grosser Saal (Concert Hall to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Symphony Orchestra).   We saw a concert here and it was amazing!
This is the Opera House and it is a few blocks away from the Concert Hall.  The group got to take a guided tour of the inside and we found out that half of the building was bombed during WWII so half of it is still from the original construction and the other half is from the remodel after the war.  The Opera company performs different opera every night so this means they have over 50 operas ready to go at all times.  They have one of the biggest crews in the world and they constantly working to change the stage daily.  Also, this is where the world famous "Vienna Opera Ball" takes place.  
This is the St. Steven's Church.  This enormous church is obviously from the Gothic period and located in the heart of Vienna.  This picture does no justice to what it actually looks like.  The church is stinkin huge and breathtaking!  Wow!
This was an original hand written score of Mozart's opera, "Don Giovanni".  This was among many other artifacts in the Mozart Museum located in his apartment where he wrote many of his famous works.

Salzburg

This is the Salzburg Fortress (Hohensalzburg). We walked all the way up this hill and we could see the entire city of Mozart's city of Salzburg.  
This is the view from the top of the fortress.  Even though you can't see it, these mountains were covered in snow.  It was amazing!
This is the Sanctuary to the St. Peters Church in Salzburg.  This shows the alter to the church.  This picture doesn't do any justice to how huge and gorgeous this church was.  
Here is the outside of the Mozarthaus.  This is his parents house in which he was born and raised in.  They had a wonderful museum inside.  
Us in front of the Mozart statue in a square in the middle of the old town.