sunday in vienna

this morning i was up WAY too early to go to mass where the vienna boy's choir sings. i came downstairs to the lobby at 8:15 and just saw the fields. i assumed everyone else was bailing on the early mass to sleep, but was shocked when 15 people came pouring out of the breakfast room 2 minutes later. i was very impressed, i won't doubt everyone anymore :)

so we took the tram/bus/thing over to the church. then we had to buy tickets! yes, buy tickets to go to church... only the catholic church would do this. anyway, the first lady tried to sell us tickets for $45 so we laughed and kept walking. when we got to the ticket place the lady told us the cheapest tickets were 4 euros so we quickly jumped on that of course. it wasn't until after we got our tickets and read where it said "no view, listening only" that we realized why we were only paying 5 euros!

after walking up (and down) about 10 flights of stairs, we finally made it to our little cubby room where our seats are. we were in this balcony type room, except the window to the balcony was so small. i seriously didn't even know if the service was taking place to the left or right of where i was. so weird. at least we had a video feed thing! the mass was in german and latin so i had no clue what was going on, but it was still interesting. the choir sounded SO good, just insane. i (along with cara, joey, derek, and tons of others) was still falling asleep, but oh well.

afterwards, we took a group picture and then got a picture with one of the little boys! it was so cute- 8 year old austrian celebrity boy :) after our early morning, we grabbed lunch at mcdonalds and then of course all went back to the hotel to crash.

at 1 pm, the whole group met to go to schonnbrunn palace. we took the subway for a bit and then unloaded in front of this pretty yellow castle! it was huge! not necessarily gorgeous from the outside, but big. we each got an audio guide to listen to while we walked around the castle. it was nice to be able to listen to a guide on your own. sometimes at our tours its hard to follow or even hear when you are with 26 other people, so it was nice to be able to spread out. the castle was really cool, and the tour gave us lots of history about the austrian empire and history.

after the tour, we hung out in the yard for a bit and then went to get coffee! some people skipped the tour so we had extra money left over. the fields' took us to this little cafe place and i got hot chocolate and chocolate mousse. so yummy!

after our little snack, everyone went their separate ways. everyone that had gone to the treasury the day before had really enjoyed it so i decided to do that. apparently we had no idea where we were going so it took us a while to actually find it, but it was worth it. we decided to get the audio guide again and that was worth it. all of the different items had a number so you could just type the number in if you wanted to hear anything about that item- very nice to be self paced. the stuff in the treasury was really cool- from jewels to clothes to crowns to some catholic stuff. supposedly this one relic held the nail that was in jesus' right hand. i'm not sure i believe that but it was cool nonetheless. there was also this ivory figure thing that was jesus and the other 2 guys on the cross. it was supposed to be a creative representation. it was cool, but hard to explain without the picture.

after about 2 hours of the treasury, we were fried and hungry, so we split for dinner. lots of people went for sushi so i of course passed on that for some pizza. turner gave us directions to some pizza place that everyone loved so we set out to find that. eventually, derek, michelle and i just found some other pizza place but it was so good! the waitress brought us an entire jug of tap water! it seriously made my day. michelle and i split a cheese pizza and a spinach and ricotta pizza- SO perfect.

after that it was 7:30 so we came back to relax.

tonight we're going to go to flannagan's restaurant to watch the football game! dr. fields made a reservation for 15 of us so it should be really fun. i'm excited for some american vibes...