Wow....where to begin!

SOOOO...it has been a while folks, and I have a lot to cover. So hang on to your seats, cause it's going to be a long ride! As far as I can tell, I left off right before Vienna so I will pick it up Friday morning for our departure.

We departed for our 5-6 hour bus ride to Vienna around 9 a.m. As bus rides go it was very uneventful until we were about a hour and a half from Vienna. I was napping at this point, and I woke up to Jana telling us that we would be stopping for about 20 minutes. I heard these gasps of disbelief followed by laughter, and I wasn't sure what everyone was making a big fuss about. Then, I turned to look out the window, and I saw it...Excalibur. As we pulled into a parking lot guarded by statues of knights on horseback I saw them...the dragons! Everywhere I looked huge dragons were lurking about. On top of buildings, on lamp posts, on the ground, it was incredible! At this point, I would have been content to just not go to Vienna and spend my weekend here. Because, on top of the amazing medieval theme, there was also the Great Wall of China surrounding a would-be Asian market, a jet plane converted into a restaurant, bumper cars, and a supermarket that sold chocolate covered animal crackers. Does life get any better?? I think not. You know, I have seen so many dragons over here that I am actually beginning to think that I might see a real one before I leave. It is very exciting to think about! So, after twenty amazing minutes, I unfortunately had to get back on the bus to complete our trek to Vienna. However, we were promised that we would stop at Excalibur again on our return trip. So, we arrived in Vienna around four in the afternoon, and we went through the same old routine of checking into our hotel and then meeting an hour later to go into the city center. I was rooming with Carly for our time in Vienna, and I really enjoyed getting to spend some one on one time with her cause she is pretty great. So, it took about 25 minutes to walk to the city center, and throughout the whole walk I was like "Why didn't I come study here?" Vienna is absolutely gorgeous! I am definitely going to make an effort to visit it again the next time I am in Europe. It is a large city, but it just has this feeling about it. I never felt overwhelmed by the size of the city, nor did I ever tire of seeing what was around the next corner. It also had a lot of beautiful parks and lawns where the people gathered to hang out, kick around a soccer ball, or just stroll around. And since the weather was really nice, there were tons of people just out enjoying the sunshine. I just immediately fell in love with the city. So, we reached the city center, which (and Stephen, you will love this) is called Stephen's Square because of the church, Stephansdom (which is in the middle of the square), which is named after the patron saint of Vienna, St. Stephen. Yeah, I know, it seemed like a little much to me too. :) Needless to say, we heard a lot about St. Stephen during that weekend. Carly and I decided to walk around and look for a cheap place to eat. We found pizza that was really cheap, and no joke, the portion size was about half of a pizza...Vienna just kept getting better! We decided to walk along one of the rivers and just see what we could see. We ended up talking about psychopaths, personalities, guys, and Criminal Minds...all in all some of my favorite things to talk about. We saw a ferris wheel in the distance and thought we would check it out. Long story short, we walked like 10 blocks past where the ferris wheel was, and by this point it was completely dark outside. So, we backtracked and managed to find it without getting lost again. What we didn't know, was that the ferris wheel was a part of the coolest amusement park of all time! It was like a county fair from the movies, only better! There was even cotton candy! So, Carly and I went on three rides...cause it was really all we had money for. We went on a Jurassic Park "ride," the ferris wheel, and a roller coaster. Keep in mind, that we are completely sober, and that we don't have any adult supervision. We were out of control :) The Jurassic park "ride" was unlike anything I have ever experienced. It was like a hybrid, cause it was half ride and half walking...kinda weird, but totally awesome. And, I must say that it did legitimately scare me once or twice, provoking some very embarrassing blood-curling screams. Good times. So Carly and I, now high on adrenaline went in search of the ferris wheel in order to bring our heart rates back down to a non-fatal range. However, the ferris wheel turned out to be almost as much of an adventure as the dinosaurs. We were in one of two pods that had people in them, so we pretty much had the ride to ourselves. We took the opportunity to take a video of the whole amusement park in all of its awesomeness. Then, on our last time around, the guy in charge of helping us on and off of the ferris wheel must have felt particularly cheeky, cause he grabbed the side of our pod and spun it as hard as he could. I almost peed in my pants. We were screaming and laughing at the same time, and he just thought we were the greatest thing since sliced bread, cause he laughed as much as we did. After disembarking from another great ride, we made our way to the roller coaster we had picked out, and since it was pretty late in the evening...probably around 9:00 p.m....we had the whole ride to ourselves. So, naturally we rode in the front row and screamed the whole time. It was such an amazing adventure! I would have gone there all the time if I had studied in Vienna...seriously. Then, we headed back to our hotel cause we had to get ready to go out that night for Robbie's birthday. So, we had about an hour in our hotel room, during which I quoted the third LOTR movie to Carly and a couple others. It was pretty epic. Then, we headed out to find this club that someone had recommended that we go to. However, some people didn't want to pay for the metro, so being a natural middleman, I tried to find a way for people to get to the club if they wanted to walk. What this turned into was me leading the group of people who wanted to walk...even though I really wanted to take the metro. About an hour later, after asking directions several times, we found the club. I was so tired at this point that I just wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep. But I had promised Robbie that I would come out at least for little bit, and I wanted him to enjoy his birthday, so I stayed...but not for long. The club that we were supposed to go to charged a really big cover charge, so we went to the one next door instead. I think that most people did this, because the second club was PACKED! I was getting legitimately angry at how obnoxious the people were too. I told Robbie that if I didn't leave I might have started a bar fight...no joke. So, I had to walk an hour back to the hotel, and didn't get back until like 2 a.m., when I had planned to be in bed by like 12:30 a.m. Good. And, thus ends the first day in Vienna. I am telling you, it was out of control!

Saturday, started off with not being able to walk to the bathroom in the morning because my feet hurt so bad from all the walking the day before. The really good news though was that all we had planned for the day were walking tours...awesome. So, Z and Jana led us around the city and took us to see some of the major sights in Vienna. Besides my feet, it was actually a really fun time. I have really started to get to know some of the other kids, and it makes the trips a lot more fun. Carly and I opted out of the second walking tour later in the day because Z said we would have had to walk about 45 minutes to even get to the place we were going to see...and I just laughed. So instead we went back to the hotel and had a nap, a glorious nap. We woke up about 2 hours later, and decided to go see the Imperial Jewels exhibit. It was a little less jewels, and a little more just stuff that the royal family had at some point or another. It was cool, but I think maybe another exhibit would have been more worthwhile. Then we walked over to see the Lipizzaner stallions. They weren't performing or anything, but we got to see them in their stalls...plus I have already seen them perform...a long time ago, I can't even remember where I saw them, but it was random. Then Carly and I met up with some other people and had dinner near the hotel. The food at the restaurant was really good, but it came in huge portions! I ordered a fried chicken breast and some fries, and what I got was a whole chicken and a potato farm. I mean it was actually kind of obnoxious how much food they served us. I ate until I thought I was going to be sick, and I had only eaten about half of what was on my plate. We all quickly slipped into food comas, and decided to just go back to the hotel and call it a night early.

Sunday was daylight savings for us, and only about four people remembered. So, we were a little late getting checked out of the hotel and on our way to the two other stops planned before heading back to Prague. Our first stop was simply a photo op. We saw a really cool contemporarily designed house which was really interesting. It has no windows that are the some dimensions, and it has over 40 different types of plants growing from the inside out. We spent about 15 minutes there taking pictures, and then we headed to the summer palace where we spent about 3 hours. Robbie, Vaughn, Brigitte, and I went on a tour of the inside of the palace and then walked around in the gardens outside, cause the weather was awesome. It was really beautiful palace, and I definitely could have spent more time there. But we had to get back on the bus to make it back to Prague by dinner time.

That pretty much sums up Vienna, and I would have told you more specifically about the places that I we saw on our tours, but I am in a cafe right now and I don't have the itinerary with me. Also, I don't have any pictures of Vienna either because my camera was stolen before I could upload any of them. Don't worry though, I am getting pictures from some friends, so I will have some soon. And then I will give you a more detailed account of what we saw. I don't want to make the post much longer, so I will wait to tell you all about the next week and Liverpool till the next post, which I might do later this evening. Right now, I am going to go read a book outside in the sunshine on this gorgeous day here in Prague. I discovered the most beautiful and quiet park earlier today, and so I am going to go try it out as a reading spot...wish me luck! Stay tuned!!