Vienna, Austria

Sunday
Here is the hotel we stayed in:


We went for a city tour first thing after breakfast. We stayed on the busses, so not a lot of ability to take pictures. I really would have liked to stop, particularly in the central park where the statues of Strauss and Mozart are. We did stop at Belevedere palace, though.

Here are Diane, me, and Rebecca, my roommates :)
This is the Prince's backyard. St Stephen's Cathedral is the tall spire covered in scaffolding (it's in the process of being cleaned). On the left side of the picture you can see the two spired of the Votive church that we vistited last night. At the bottom of the hill to the right you can see the edge of the Winter palace--the on at the top is the Summer palace. Man, to have two palaces!!

Another short ride through the city, seeing palaces and artsy things everywhere, then the final stop of the tour at St Stephen's Cathedral, or rather, the square in front of it.

Here is the spire:

And here ^ you can see the efforts of the cleaning, from where it hasn't been cleaned yet to where it has, to where it continues.

While there, the World Cup was being played in Bern, Switzerland, and Vienna. This particular evening the Italians and the Spanish were playing, and you can see the fans all dressed up in the background, waving flags and everything. It was very fun to see their excitement (Spain won that evening)

That afternoon we went to our church in Vienna, and attended the International (English Speaking) ward:

We had free time after Sacrament Meeting, but not enough time to load up the busses and go through an art museum or something (there are a lot in Vienna), so we basically just hung out--some of use went to a park near the church, some stayed at the building. I started at the park, then took a walk down by the Danube Canal (not the actual rivier, that comes later).

We had a performance that evening at the church, our first one in Austria. One reason for sticking close to the church was to add in one more rehearsal before the performance. I thought it went very well. There were exceptions (Home on the Range did not go well), but in particulare "The Dream Isaiah Saw" was wonderful. There was a brother there with the most magnificent baritone; we had him do the opening solo. It was amazing. Note for next time: bring recording equipment and a friend to work it.

I liked this building ^. You can see where it says, "Urania" on the building. Uranus is the seventh planet in a (current) family of nine, as am I, so I'm partial to the greenish-blue marble and anything that has to do with it, or its mythology. so of course, I had to take a picture of this building.

And here is where we had dinner:

No interesting trees this time, but across the street was the Hotel Sacher, which is famous for its unique chocolate cake (we had some at this restuarant, although it wasn't the official cake). Across the nearest intersection was the Opera House. Not too bad a shot, even if it was dark.