June 18-

The past two days have been great, Vienna is so much cooler than I expected. Yesterday, we visited the Belvedere Museum, which had a lot of really interesting paintings and sculptures and was one of my favorite museums so far. We then drove an hour to Eisenstadt to visit Esterhazy Palace, where the composer Joseph Haydn worked most of his life. It was easily the most boring thing we've done so far, and I wish I had the four house of driving and walking through the palace back. Anyway, last night was great, we walked a few minutes to the Prater, the big amusement park near our hotel. We did bumper cars, which was definitely the best 1 euro I've spent yet. They let us go for probably 10 minutes, and everybody had a blast. We walked around the park until around midnight and rode a few more rides, everybody really enjoyed it. It's really cool that we have a group of 20-25 that does almost everything together, most of us didn't know each other before but we've all gotten along so well. Today has been amazing. We went to Stephansdom cathedral, which was huge and different than the cathedrals we've seen so far. I paid to go up to the top, and the view of the city was really cool. After that, we visited Karlsplatz station and the Karlskirhe church, both of which were interesting. We were done at around noon for the day, so a big group of us went to the Schoenbrunn Palace. The Palace itself is huge and impressive, but the best part was the gardens. We might go inside tomorrow, but today we just walked around them all day. The gardens are enormous, and by far the prettiest we've seen. Just some of the things in them are a huge public pool, zoo, and labyrinth (hedge maze). We decided to walk up a huge hill, and arrived with a spectacular view overlooking the gardens, palace, and the city. It was free to get in, and we just sat and relaxed there for a few hours. Tonight, we're hoping to go to the Prater Dome, supposedly a 5 story discotheque. Tomorrow is a free day, and I think a bunch of us are planning on renting bikes (really cheap) and riding back to the palace. Tomorrow night we have a concert (I think opera), and then Saturday we head to Prague. Hopefully I'll get internet soon, it's really annoying not having it.