Vienna is a very beautiful city, full of parks, museums and history. We really only had one day so we didn't even scratch the surface... We decided to start at the imperial palace.
The palace has a bunch of museums inside so we took in a couple of them. We started with the Armory Museum. It is home to a massive amount of weapons and armour from throughout history. It was an excellent collection and we both recommend it to future visitors.
Next was the ancient musical instruments museum. The collection contained countless, priceless instruments that were hundreds of years old. It will take too long to go into the details, so instead here are some of our favorite pictures:
There were a lot of different types of violins. They even had "practice" versions that were small enough to fit in the pocket. Obviously the sound was not the best, but they worked great for students (very affordable and they could practice anywhere).We also found a "new" instrument, the Baryton, that basically fell off the map in the 1500s. Jesse is now determined to either find one, or build one (hahahaha) and learn how to play. The best way to describe it would be similar to a 7 stringed, fretted cello. It also has a second set of 12 strings below the first set that vibrate when the top ones are played. The back of the neck is also exposed so the player can use his thumb to pluck the lower set. The museum had recorded music samples to listen to.
The 2 museums basically took up the entire day. It started raining that evening so we didn't get to see as much of the city as we hopped. Vienna was home to Beethoven, Mozart, and most of the major composers of the time, but we didn't get to see any of it... If we have the opportunity we would really like to return and spend a few days taking everything in.
We ended our evening with a stop at Zanoni & Zanoni for an amazing ice cream concoction:
No comments:
Post a Comment