Yay for the new Ubahn Station being open! Now I only have to ride to Kagranerplatz instead of Kagran, which cuts a good 10 mins off my trip to school everyday. They were throwing a party all day Sat at all of the new Ubahn stops, live music, balloons, it was crazy!
Anyway, I went to the Rathaus on Fri. It was pretty cool. Marriage of Figarro.
On Sat we got up early and went to Nachtmarkt and the flea market that is there on Sat. The flea market was pretty much just a normal flea market only bigger, except I did run across some Communist propaganda pins and Natzi artifacts, like passports and pictures of flags. It was weird and creepy.
The market was really cool. There was so much food! Meat, and vegetables, and barrels of pickles, tons of olives stuffed with cheese, honey, dried fruits of every kind, cheese, bread and pastries. But my favorite was the vinegar booth. They had so many kinds of vinegar! more than I ever knew existed. Fruits, and ciders, and wines... And it was all either in big wooden barrels, or in these fancy glass things. Each one had a tiny bottle that looked like a perfume sample next to it, and you would take it and put a drop on your wrist and smell it. if you liked it you went and bought an empty glass bottle, and then filled it up with vinegar. It was pretty cool.
After the market we went to Schronbrunn Palace. First we went to the maze, which was really the only thing I wanted to pay for. The palace grounds are free to roam, but you have to pay for a tour of the palace, and the many attractions on the grounds, such as the maze and labyrinth, the zoo, the pool, the gardens, the palm house, and others. Anyway, we went into the maze and labyrinth, which kinda reminded me of a mini sciene museum that never explains the science behind everything. The mazes were really pretty and cut out of bushes, and I think it said they had been like that for a couple hundered years, but to make it more interesting inside the mazes were different "games" you could play. So we were there for a couple of hours. Afterwards, Zena and miranda went to the zoo, and me and Michelle wandered around the grounds untill we were both tired and hungry and decided to go home. It was a really fun day.

The rooms inside the Rathaus were all lit up














Schonbrunn palace from the front


















The view from the back of the palace. In the distance you can kinda see the neptune fountain, and on the hill is the Gloriette. this isn't even really anything, the pretty landscaping isn't the gardens, it's just the grounds, and you can walk all around. If there's one thing I really didn't like about the palace, it's the gravel everywhere. It's not fun to walk on, plus it glares and it's ugly. they don't want you to walk on the lawn, which is understandable with all the work that's put into the landscaping, but I wish they would make the lawns bigger and the gravel less.
















































A lot of the trees are huge and really old. This one happens to be 200 years old.


















More of the tree. See the guy's head in the corner? Just as a reference to show how big the tree is.


















"dancing glockenspiel" you stepped on the squares and it played different notes.














The maze

































The labyrinth














giant jungle gym made out of trampoline pieces















water thingy... you pressed things and it squirted water















Giant bird!!! It flew up and down!! It was so fun!















See, the ropes in front would pull on the wings, and the body of the bird was attached to the wings so that it would go opposite of them, so if someone pulled on the ropes, the bird would "fly" up and down


















Back of the neptune fountain....blogger tends to put my pics not in chronological order...


















View of the palace from through the fountain


















The palace, and the city behind it. There's a lot of places with a "great view" of vienna, but the city is actually pretty boring to look at from up high. Not exactly an interesting skyline.














Behind the fountain



















Finally, here's the front of the Neptune fountain















The Gloriette up close.


















A detail from the Obleisk fountain on the grounds. The fountain itself isn't running and is all fenced off and looks really out of place since everything else on the grounds, even the statues in the woods, are nice and taken care of. But the hieroglyphics on the fountain were cool.


















The Gloriette















The palace and some of the grounds. Again, this is not even the garden. just the grounds.














we think these are Roman ruins....? it's hard to tell on the map exactly where you are. There are a lot of trails and things to see.