Austria, Slovakia, and... Kuwait?

I've done an incredible amount of things today, yet I still have 4 days left in the trip. I'll quickly go over just some of things I did. We began our day with our final breakfast at the Vienna hotel. Instead of going to the central cemetery, we decided to go somewhere more exciting, the Kunsthistoriches Museum (Museum of Fine Arts) in Mariatheresienplatz.

The museum was a massive gallery covering art from Egypt, Greece, Rome, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, and Holland, including Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, and Bruegel, just to name a few famous painters. The museum was set up similarly to the Louvre, with each section of the museum devoted to a certain art origin. Each room was also architecturally designed in the style of that particular culture. For example, the entrances to Egyptian rooms looked like ancient, golden temples with heiroglyphics, while the Roman and Greek rooms were covered in marble and full of columns.

After buying an audioguide, we chronologically went through the museum, starting in Ancient Egypt and ending in the Renaissance period. The museum was very interesting and I saw some famous paintings. The only problem was a special exhibition from a modern artist named Jan Fabre, whose mediocre ballpoint pen art pieces were covering priceless painting from the Renaissance era. After finishing the museum and buying a few souvenirs, it was already 2PM.

Next, we went to the city center at Stephansplatz and climbed the north tower of the Stephansdom cathedral. There were 373 steps, but the climb was well worth it. The views from the top of the cathedral were incredible, especially since it was our first sunny day in Vienna. After descending from the cathedral, we had some late lunch from a fast-food vendor. I had some Doner style chicken, and also tried a bit of falafel. Before we left Vienna, we also had some Italian style ice cream.

To go to Bratislava, we used the Twin City Liner boat from Vienna. We got front row seats in the incredibly comfortable boat, but also spent some time outside while on the trip. We saw the Danube canal of Vienna meet the actual Danube river close to Slovakia, as well as some riverside fishing cabins. The boat went incredibly fast for its size (reaching a speed of 70 km/h), since it had two 1000 horsepower engines. We were in Bratislava within 75 minutes.

In Bratislava we reached our hotel within minutes and noted that it was an incredibly condensed city, with all of the major attractions and buildings within a one square mile area. Our hotel is in an excellent location and our room had a nice view of the town square and the castle. We also found out that the rooms directly next to us were the offices of the Kuwait embassy in Bratislava. If we leave our hotel room, the first thing we see is the desk of the embassy and the flag of Kuwait. The technical border to Kuwait is only inches away from us now. The building next to our hotel is also the U.S. embassy.

In Bratislava, the first thing we decided to do was to go to the UFO observation tower. This unique tower was actually the main tower of a suspension bridge (pictured above), holding up thousands of tons of steel, asphalt, and automobiles. The view from the top was quite incredible as we saw three countries, Slovakia's capital, Austria's farms, and the Danube in Hungary far in the distance. We decided not to eat at the restaurant up there though due to its absolutely ridiculous prices.

Next, we decided to take a walk in the neighborhood near our city and realized how small the city really is. We spent only an hour but walked through the entire Old Town seeing many various restaurants, shops, and embassies. As we walked, we tried to decide on a restaurant to eat at later on. Eventually, after a short break at the hotel, we had dinner at an authentic Slovakian restaurant. Due to the similarities between the Slovak language and Polish, we could speak in Polish without too much issue. I had a potato pancake stuffed with various meats, including pork, chicken and beef, and I also tried some authentic Czechoslovakian dumplings.

Looking back at the Museum of Fine Art, I can't believe that was still done today, but we still have a full four more days left in the entire trip before returning to the U.S. Tomorrow, we'll spend our full day in Bratislava, just exploring the city. On Friday though, we'll be flying to Dublin and spending our last 3 days of the trip there. I hope to upload my pictures from Vienna tomorrow, so you can expect those soon!