Evening Exploration

When Jon arrived back to the apartment after work around 4:30, there was still a little daylight left, so we headed out for a walk to explore some of downtown Vienna. Here are pictures from our stroll...

This is the St. Stephens Cathedral. I love the Gothic style architecture of this church; these humongous cathedrals amaze me. This cathedral was finished in 1160. I hope to get better pictures of it sometime during our trip, that is if the sun shows it's lovely face.
Right now they are doing some restoration to the exterior of the church so I could only shoot so many photographs without capturing the work equipment.













Another church near the cathedral

As Jon and I continued exploring Vienna we came across the Rathaus. This was definitely one of the many sights I wanted to see while we were here, and I am so happy we ran into it!

Through the trees.



Jon


As we approached, we saw all of the tents and people and realized there was a festival going on... Score! We grabbed a mug of gluwein and walked around the fest. This festival is known as the Viennese Ice Dream, in which they've built a 4,000 square meter ice skating rink. At the entrance of the festival there is a large rink, then the rink snakes through to the front of the Rathaus into another large rink. It was incredible to see.

I found these two pictures on the internet so you can have a better idea of what this looked like:
You can see the first rink in the front, then the trail snakes through to the back where there is another large rink, right in front of the castle. Isn't that amazing!


This is the other pic I found on the internet, showing you what the trail of ice looks like.


Here are a couple more picture I captured from our evening.
The Rathaus is the City Hall in Vienna. It was built between 1872 and 1883.








I'll keep the pictures coming ;)