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Vienna day 2

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The rain is here to stay, making today another good day to visit a gallery. We left our big heavy bags at the hostel after checking out and made our way to the Belvedere gallery which is one of Vienna's many great places to absorb some culture. We bought tickets to see the Gustav Klimt exhibition which was just amazing. The paintings are huge in real life. 'The kiss' was the centre piece, taking up an entire wall top to bottom. A lot of the works on display were unfinished as he died before he could complete them, but there was something nice about seeing his work from a more deconstructed perspective.

 

 Along with that we got to see some of Egon Sheile's stuff too, which is an artist our life drawing teacher always used to rave about. He's a big deal when it comes to drawing naked bodies and even some not so naked bodies. A lot of the work we saw was (relatively clothed) family portraits and embracing couples which were similar in subject matter yet very different to the Gustav Klimt exhibition. 


After that we hopped on a series of trams that took us around the old city wall of Vienna. We got a nice tour of the city's grand architecture without getting soaked in the rain! (We've learned from our experience in Prague). We may or may not have taken a wee detour on a wrong tram at some point... Ehem... So we took a wander though some gardens :) 

 

Vienna was actually a little chilly for us, we seemed to have found a pocket of autumnal weather. In Scotland this would be normal and we'd be prepared, but Fiona was lacking on the whole jumper front, so we popped into a few shops to find her an extra layer. Just a little bit of retail therapy. Nothing too lavish. I was getting hungry by this point, which happens a lot, so I got myself one of these cheesy sausages from a street food stall. Fiona just laughed at me while I awkwardly ate it in the middle of the busy high street. 

It wasn't long before we had to head back to the hostel to collect our bags before catching our train. We charged all of our electrical appliances in prep for the night train and Fiona ate a sandwich with the sweaty cheese we got from Zagreb (ew). The night train was a lot more tolerable this time, we got a Starbucks to go and sat with a nice couple and chatted about nearly every subject under the sun. By the time midnight came we had the carriage to ourselves with plenty of room to stretch out and slept until we arrived in Venice! :) 

Claire

 

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