Last Day in Vienna

So sad, it's the last day in Vienna. Although I love it here in Europe, I will be glad to be home. This morning we listened to organ music at the St. Steven's Cathedral. Then we went back to the apartment to pack. I will see everyone when I get back bye!!!!!

Halstatt

I’m in Halstatt, the most beautiful place on the planet!!!!!!!!!! It is soooooooo gorgeous here, in this little town next to a lake under the big Alp Mountains!!!! What a better place to end your vacation!?! Today we hiked up one of the Alps on a very steep trail. There were so many wonderful views and I can’t begin to explain the beauty of this little town. It looks like it is right out of a fairy tale. Too bad we can only stay here for a day.
On our way there it was so weird, we saw two guys that were going to scuba dive!!!!! It's like the middle of the winter........ there crazzzzzy!!!!!

Today my dad and I went to a museum at The Belvedere Palace while my mom was out of town with her students for a day. We looked at the original art by artists like Klimpt, Rodin, and Schiele. The art was amazing, I loved how you could see the stories that the art told. There was one piece were there were many people huddled around a chess set, one man was sitting looking at the chess board and had an insulted and confused expression on his face, so you could see that he had lost the game. Across from him stood a beautiful woman in a pink dress looking pleasantly down at the the chess board as well. I could see that she was the winner of the game because there were many people starring at her in admiration. Some other proof was that in the cluster of people there was a fat lady looking at the woman in the pink with a look of jealousy, probably jealous of the woman's smart and beautiful qualities. Also, there was a man sitting and starring up at the woman obviously completely in love with her.

The Spanish Riding School

Today was purely horses. First thing in the morning we watched the morning training at the Spanish Riding School. The Spanish Riding School is the best classical dressage program in the world. It is a riding school where riders go through years and years of training, then get appointed with a stallion that they will train right from the start and move up through all the moves and levels of classical horsemanship with. Spanish Riding School riders wear the fanciest clothing to keep the military tradition. The grounds are unbelievable. The arena is in the in-town palace and is made purely out marble. You should have seen the stables. The stalls were so roomy and had long padded isles when you stepped out of them. The wash area had fancy everything and hot heat lamps to dry and relax the horses after their bath. The moves were unbelievable also. They did moves as complicated as the piaffe and the levade. The stallions were so strong; you should have seen the necks on these horses, soooooooo muscular. It was so funny, and a little bit scary, right when the grooms were taking the horses out of the arena, on of the horses was feeling frisky, and decided to break loose from the halter and gallop around the ring non stop bucking it's head off.

The riders were also just as amazing, when they asked the horses for difficult tasks the horses didn’t even hesitate, and the rider’s aids were invisible. The riders were strong as well. one guy did this very interesting thing, when he dismounted, he did a handstand on the horse's back, then vaulted himself off. The part I liked most was that you could see the horses learning, it was so inspiring.

Here's a link to the Spanish Riding School- click here

Second my mom and I went this humungous tack store!!! They probably had ten million blankets and sheets!!!!!! I got spray on stain remover for white horses, because as you can imagine, they get dirt spots very frequently. I also got some ear muffs and a fill out board to put my pony’s medical info on.

After my mom and I left the tack shop we went back to the apartment to meet my dad and went out to dinner.

The last pic is me standing in front of The Vienna City Hall. It looks just like the one in Williamstown..............NOT!!!!!!!

Second Day in Vienna

My mom, my dad, and I started off our day at a very nice cafe where we got breakfast. Then we waked across the street to the butterfly museum. It was very different than when I visited it two years ago, there was only a few butterflies, because of winter probably. After that my mom, dad and I walked down the big shopping street and got some clothes. We went to two H&Ms and a bunch of shoe stores. After my mom left to bring the students she brought on her travel course on a museum tour, my dad and I went to a very old and famous church, The Saint Steven's Cathedral. You wouldn't believe the architecture in this church, it was beautiful. We decided to ride the street car around town and see all the big buildings out the window after we left the church. The stop that we got off was right next to a big river, The Danube. At the end of the day we went to a big out door food market to get groceries, ( There was this vegetable place and it had so many vegetables that it looked like a forest. The veggies were very exotic, they even had kumquats, which is way more fun to say than it is to write.) and then we went back to the apartment.

Vienna

Last night we took the train from the airport to our apartment in Vienna were we met my mom. When we got there it was like 11:30 so we slept very late the next morning. After we finally were at least half awake we went to a very big library with an internet cafe were I got a mocha. We stayed there for a long time looking at all the books, paper products, and working on the internet. Then we did a little of window shopping and went back to the apartment to relax. Nothing of much importance happened today.

Video of Historical Site

Third thing: Roman Forum

We visited was the Roman Forum, the center of anchient Rome. All the buildings from different time periods in Roman history were dug up. There is this huge area in the middle of the city where they are finding tuns of old buildings.Some buildings are even two buildings on top of each other. We visited an old church that was on top of one of the first Roman collages. There is this big building that we visited that the Catholics hundreds of years ago tried to rip down because they did not want signs of other churches (the Romans worshiped the planet gods). If you look closely at the picture you can see rope marks on the upper part of the columns where they tried to rip them down.

second thing on the last day in rome

The second thing we did was visit the catacombs. By anchient Roman law everone had to be buried when they died. Since the Romans did not like the Christians, the Christians could not be buried inside the city walls. That is where the catacombs came in. The Christians were buried in the catacombs. The catacombs were a 40 foot underground crypt dug through soft lava. There were many tunnels and paintings in the hallways. Each nich along the sides of the tunnels that people were buried in contained an oil lamp and a marble plaque with a prayer and information about the person.
The tomb we visited was one out of 60 catacombs. Just the one we visited had 30 miles of tunnel.

Last Day in Rome

On our last day in Rome we tried to fit as much stuff in as possible. The first thing we did was visit another park. In the park we saw many parrots, (don't ask me how they got there).

Pantheon

Out our window

Had a very, very, busy day today in Rome and then a two hour flight to Vienna!!!! Very tiered, will write a million posts tomorrow!!!!
-Mercer

Pretty Trees

Today my dad and I took many pictures when we visited a breathtaking park.

The Coliseum

The Coliseum is called the "Colossus" in Italian, and was the home of the ancient Gladiators. This building was used as an entertainment center, sort of like a circus or movie theater. The prisoners that were held capture did stuff like wrestle large animals to death and bull fighting. They had events like when the flooded it and floated boats as part of the show. The Colossus is very important to the Catholic religion because many early Christians were forced to join the entertainment and die.

Pantheon

The Pantheon is a massive building over 2,000 years old!!!!! It is very impressive looking at the beautiful building strait out our hotel window. The Pantheon was built as a temple for the planet gods such as Jupiter, Mars, Saturn. This temple has been a Catholic Church for 1,300 years and it is in way better shape than most of the other ancient buildings because it was a working church. They even still have religious services there.

Graffiti

I_have definitely discovered a warm spot in my heart for graffiti. I understand why it is illegal, but it is still another form of art, and is used very precisely to express strong feelings. These pics are not the best examples but it gives you an idea.

( It was a long walk )

More pics