Vienna & Venice

            We had the opportunity to be able to go to Vienna and Venice with our program and Jan, a professor at the University here in Olomouc. While preparing for the trip, I was anxious to visit these well known places but had no idea what to expect.

            We left early in the morning from Olomouc and made our way to Austria for our first stop: Vienna. I knew it was the cultural capital of the area for a long time and that they important buildings but that was about it. When we arrived we walked around the city where there was a long street full of shopping, restaurants, and souvenir shops. This was very different then what I’m used to because in other places where I have been there are short, crammed streets with vendors and stands. Here it was more industrialized and modern. That was probably my favorite part of Vienna, it was modern and had more fashion. We walked until we got to a monument with two large buildings on both sides. I then found out that those buildings are very important museums. One was an art museum, and the other was a natural sciences museum. We kept walking past the Hofberg palace and came upon Roman ruins. I had never seen the ruins of a previous civilization and this was a very interesting thing to me. We finished the day by walking in the St. Stephen’s Cathedral. This was my favorite cathedral so far because the roof was colorful and it had an interesting gothic feel to it.  

            The second day we visited the Hapsburg Imperial treasury. Here we got to see the crowns, jewels, and clothing of the Hapsburg Imperial rule. It was cool to see firsthand what it was like back then and see how extravagant they lived. After, I went into the Natural Science museum I had previously seen. Here, I roamed the museum and saw everything from prehistoric dinosaurs, fish, civilizations.

            Our time in Vienna came to a close and our next stop was Venice! We got into Venice the next afternoon and we walked out of the train station, immediately the view was of the grand canal and I was speechless. Venice is like nothing I had ever seen. The bright buildings, the people, the bridges, the boats… everything took my breath away. We got into a water taxi which was SO foreign to me! And got to our amazing hostel. We spent the rest of the day exploring the city and ended up at an amazing pizza place.

            Early the next morning, we quickly found the Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal and took a few too many pictures of the beautiful view. We continued walking over bridges, down tight allies and over more bridges and made our way to the St. Mark’s. Before getting to Venice, I had no idea just how much history was on this city.

            Overall, Venice was by far my favorite out of this trip. It was like nothing I have ever experienced and I loved being able to be by water and travel to Murano, a glass blowing island, for a quick daytrip. The city was different and the things we were able to do were incredible!