Ann Laemmlen Lewis

A Christmas Eve Feast!

In keeping with our family Christmas tradition of eating Mexican food on Christmas Eve, we had a quiet evening at the hotel in the sports bar, where they served American style Quesadillas and burgers! And FREE tap water (the first time we’ve had free water since we arrived in Europe).

We enjoyed a quiet Christmas Eve in our hotel room, reading, listening to Christmas music and thinking about our dear Savior, Jesus Christ who came into this world to make it better for all of us. I really hope He comes again soon.

Tonight is the night families celebrate Christmas here–with food, family and gifts. For us, it was quiet and thoughtful. We are so grateful to be here, but we Really Miss Our Kids and Grandkids.

Claire’s BYU Vienna Study Abroad School and Apartment

Our next plan was to find the American Institute where Claire went to school here. We had the addresses of the school and her apartment. We found the American Institute near the Opera House where Claire had her classes. That was fun. Then we had to go find where her apartment was, about a 20-30 min walk from there, past the cathedral and to the inner edge of the ring, which is the old Vienna. We found the building, not far from the canal outside the ring.

The view from the American Institute:

Claire’s stomping grounds:

Walking through town to find her apartment.

A scar building:

Found the apartment building where Claire lived!

It’s near the canal. She’d send us pics where she’d sit on the banks to study. It was so fun to finally have visuals of what her life was like as a BYU student studying Art History and Humanities here.

Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace

When you purchase a ticket, you sign up for a time to enter the palace. We

The 1,441-room Baroque palace is one of the most important architectural, cultural, and historic monuments in the country. The history of the palace and its vast gardens spans over 300 years, reflecting the changing tastes, interests, and aspirations of successive Habsburg monarchs. It has been a major tourist attraction since the mid-1950s.

We paid for the grand palace tour and saw most of the 2nd floor (of 3 floors). It was pretty elaborate, but not over the top like some places we’ve seen. Clearly, they had money and power and control. The palace is a symmetrical yellow building with long wings on either side. We walked through with an audio headset and explanations of each room and what took place there.

One was the room where Mozart performed for the first time as a child. There were state rooms, ball rooms, receiving rooms, bedrooms, and everything in between, one after the next with all connected by a long passage/hallway.

The hard-to-see map in this room showed the extent of the Habsburg empire in Europe.

I didn’t know much about Austria’s history. The Habsburgs ruled a long time. Rather than fighting/wars to conquer territory, they focused on marrying off the daughters and having lots of children, who were then married off to political alliances to have more children. They wanted everything kept in the family. One matriarch had 16 children. Over time, the imbreeding got so bad, it led to the end of the monarchy. The children had defects and deformities, the men couldn’t reproduce, the women weren’t attractive, there were mental issues. They had prominent chins, big lips and long noses. The palace was filled with portraits of people who all looked the same. That was interesting.

About the time WWI began and a plague struck, the monarchy came to an end. But for a long time, they ruled a great part of Europe from Austria.

This painting shows people coming to celebrate a royal wedding.

Here’s a look at a room that’s being restored:

One of the famous large families:

The tour took about an hour and it was very interesting. Afterwards we took a quick walk out back into the expansive gardens (all put to bed now for the winter and Very Cold). We didn’t linger long there. The gardens are free to the public.

Outside in front of the palace was another Christmas Market, a really fun one. There was an old-fashioned Ferris wheel and 2 merry-go-rounds (old vintage). The stalls and shops were nicely spaced and it wasn’t overly crowded. The food smelled good. Music played, there was a small skating rink and some curling going on.

The back side of the palace:

We bought a few ornaments from this nice man.

There were lots of families out today on Christmas Eve Day. It was fun and festive.

The Christmas Market at Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace –Day 5

Today is Christmas Eve Day. It’s cold and crisp here in Vienna. Today we took a train to the edge of town (about 30 minutes) to visit Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace, the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers.

The sign below says, “Careful, bulbs are sleeping here!”

Here’s the entrance to the palace and the entrance to another Christmas Market!

If tourists go there, Christmas Markets will greet them! This market had so many beautiful hand-crafted treasures. Come take a look–

Chocolate tools!

These huge Christmas trees are cut and brought in to the market places. This one was especially beautiful in front of the pale gold palace.

Waffle Christmas trees:

Advent Konzerte in Vienna’s Kapuzinekirche

Tonight’s was called an Advent Concert with music from Bach, Handel, Mozart, Vivaldi, Correlli and Schubert, including a few Christmas carols. It was a string quartet with a trumpet added and a soprano operettic singer with a really big voice. I enjoyed the music, but not so much the voice and the trumpet player wasn’t nearly as good as last night’s. But it was fine and the concert was over within an hour. The chapel was beautiful with warm woods with a beautiful Christmas tree decorated with straw ornaments. There was a beautiful Pieta in one side alcove and a Nativity scene in the other. There were probably about 100 people in the audience.

Vienna’s Belvedere Art Museum and Christmas Market

After a morning in the Vienna Central Cemetery, Signe dropped us off at the Belvedere. We walked around to the front of the palace, now an art museum. We had about 1.5-2 hours to wait until our ticket time to go in. It was Really Cold today. There is another Christmas Market here, so we enjoyed wandering through it while we waited for our turn to go into the museum.

These are the palace gardens in winter.

We were told the Belvedere is a manageable sized art museum with a little bit of everything (easier to tackle than the big museum that takes days to see everything). We spent about 2 hours here, seeing the upper floor with the famous Klimt “The Kiss,” and some of his other works. There were a few other very famous pieces, but my favorites are always the French Impressionists (there were only a few here).