Vienna! Another city that is on my bucket list.  We drove around to see the city, which actually not my favorite way to see the city, I like walking around.  I didn’t like sitting on the bus and just looked at St. Stephen Cathedral, the Hoffburg, and Parliament House from a distant.  Anyways, We went to Schӧnbrunn PaIace and went inside.  It’s ridiculously beautiful, but it’s not the inside of the palace that I looked forward to, actually it’s the Summer Garden of the palace.  But we skipped it because my tour guide said it’s winter; there’s no flowers, but I still wanted to see it anyways! What a bummer!

Schӧnbrunn Palace is Austria's most frequently visited tourist attraction.  The baroque style palace was the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers.  It has 1,441 rooms and is the most important cultural, historical and architectural monument in the country.

Then we went for lunch and stopped by Vienna Opera House.  Vienna Opera House was featured in a some Hollywood movies, one of them is Mission Impossible III, funny, it looks tremendous in the movie, but not so much in real life.  But hey, it’s still beautiful. 

Vienna Opera House of Wiener Staatsoper is one of the busiest opera house in the world producing 50 to 60 operas in a repertory system per year and ten ballet productions in more than 350 performances. - wikipedia

In the afternoon, we went to Pandorf Designer Outlet just outside of Vienna.  It’s literally the biggest designer outlet I’ve ever been!  It’s really nice though, you can find almost all affordable to middle designer brand there with good offer and discount.  Better than the one in Japan or Hong Kong. 

That’s all for Vienna! Hallstatt tomorrow!

Aww! So excited for this!  Maybe you already figured it out that most of the places I want to see is because I see travel program way too often.  Hallstatt is actually one of the top of my list.  It just looks magical in pictures.  I was a bit anxious though I was worried it’d rain; you know raining is never a good while traveling.  But lucky me! The weather was just so perfect.  I even only wore my radiance seamless Alo Yoga legging which has a lot of holes, but of course I put on knee high boots.

The reason why I wore legging in this trip was because I wanted to do some splits and it’d be impossible to do it in leather pants and leggings are damn comfortable!  

After our short visit in Hallstatt -well, every visit is short in trip- we went to Salzburg to see Mirabelle Garden.  That iconic garden in the Sound of Music movie, but you already know how it went. We arrived at 4 p.m., it’s already dark and it’s winter anyways, so there’s little to no flowers at all. I really couldn’t see the beauty of the place, only some statues standing tall.  Damn it!

We then walked across this bridge that is supposed to be beautiful, but it is beautiful with all the lights and Hohensalzburg Fortress, which can be seen from there.  Ah! That bridge with lots of love locks is over the Salzach River, it’s called Makartsteg bridge.  It was named after Hans Makart, an Austrian academic who was born and raised in Salzburg.  Funny, my tour guide didn’t mention it, I had to googled, huh.

Then we went to this old town, in which located Mozart’s Birthplace; we didn’t enter, but it’s supposed to be a museum.  I am sure, this trip would be way better if we didn’t go in winter and not using travel agency.  But it’s okay, be grateful that I still could go there and not being sick at all during the trip.

That’s it, we’re leaving Austria in the morning, but we’re heading to Kitzsteinhorn, the “Top of Salzburg” in Kaprun before we actually left. The viewing platform is 3,029m above sea level, the highest point in Salzburg land and it’s accessible without special alpine skills all year round by cable car. The entrance fee for adult is Eur59. It’s where people go to ski. While we’re there just to see the snow lol. So, funny. People must have looked at us like a dork. Lol.

We spent around 3 hours there before we went to our next destination, Munich.  Yap! We’re back to Munich, to old town Marienplatz.  I’ve been there before, so I didn’t complain when we got there in the evening, not much changes there, except for the Christmas market, which was a nice additional at the center of Marienplatz.  We’re there just to have dinner at Hardrock Café, which was packed! I understand it’s Sunday night, but it’s too packed!

Now, finally, our last day.  We went to Füssen to Neuschwanstein Castle! Again, not my first time :p However, I was still really excited because I’ve wanted to see the Disney Castle covered by snow.  This time, I wore my sneakers not my wedges Stan Smith! So, I walked up to the castle, it was a bit rainy, snow rain.  But I didn’t care, I had to see the castle from the top.  It’s easy, it’s only 15 minutes walk from Hohenschwangau. 

Unfortunately, the Marien Bridge or Marienbrücke is closed due to maintenance, so there’s no way I could get a clear shot of the whole castle like I did 4 years ago.  I tried to find another way, but the bridge is the only path.

So, I went back, and I saw this huge castle door, so I thought I’d do L-shape handstand instead.  I couldn’t go back empty-handed.  It’s kinda fun though, taking picture in the middle of snow rain with people watching, with all the slippery floor and wall.

And yeah, that summed up my Euro Trip this year.  Although it’s winter, it’s pretty nice, the weather wasn’t that harsh, I was not sick, everything went pretty much okay.  It felt great to be back in Europe after almost 3 years, next time either in Spring or Autumn. 

Hopefully.