Upper Belvedere is Prince Eugene's main palace, as it is a lot bigger and much more sumptuous than Lower Belvedere (or we would presume, based on the engravings depicting what the rooms originally looked like, as most of the original rooms are not there anymore). Now, Upper Belvedere houses art from the likes of Monet, Manet, Renoir, Rodin, Degas, Munch (actually, it's more like 1 painting from each artist) and has a whole floor dedicated to Austrian painters from the 1700s to late 1800s and not only how their styles reflected the times they lived in, but how visionary they were, paving new pathways in art. The most important work in Upper Belvedere is The Kiss by Gustav Klimt,
as well as his work, Judith I.
I would have loved to spend more time here as well, but we timed ourselves to leave at 11:30am as we were planning to catch the 2:20pm train, and I was still rushing through it all by 12pm! Angel would stand at the next door when she was done looking at the paintings and look pointedly at me, telling me to "hurry it up a notch." She was as stern-looking as the security guards!
When we were eating the kebab sandwich yesterday, an American couple sat down next to us. They had bought a bratwurst stuffed inside bread and it looked really good, especially when they started eating it and realized there was cheese inside! So of course we had to get one today to try as well:
The portion is huge! It was really yummy and fatty but Angel liked the kebab sandwich we had yesterday more, so after walking a block away, we had to go back to the stand to buy a sandwich for her! Look at her, she's so greedy!
We walked our luggage to the nearest big intersection we saw, but it took a while to hail a taxi. Many taxis that drove by waved to us, which we had no idea what that meant. I assume it means the driver saw how much luggage we had and didn't want to deal with it? It was raining and muggy, plus we were panicking that we wouldn't get to the station on time for the 2:20pm train ;( Although I must say, so far in our trip, every day that the weather forecast states it will rain, it hasn't ended up happening all that much. The worst is some major downpours but they lighten up really fast. I swear, one minute it is bright and sunny and lovely, the next minute it's raining cats and dogs! But luckily, every time a major downpour comes about, we are normally inside a museum. By the time we get out, it's sunny again!
We did end up catching the train, just barely. The Westbahnhof station in Vienna is under construction, so there was no elevator on the side the taxi driver dropped us off at! There is an elevator on the other side of the building, but then we would have to lug our luggage there, so we heaved the heavy luggage up 2 flights of stairs. Angel's weak on upper body strength and was lagging behind... an Austrian guy was coming up the stairs and picked up her luggage and carried it up for her! Gotta love the Austrians! ^.^
The OBB train is Austria's fast speed train. It connects Salzburg to Vienna in 2 hours and 40 minutes. It is by far the cleanest we've come across so far in our train traveling, and the bathrooms are spotless (go figure, the one time we didn't need to go!).
We were worried about luggage space, and we were correct~ no luggage space available. But there were spaces open, so we each took a seat by the window and had our luggage next to us (thereby taking up 4 seats in total). :) The tickets are pricey (around 40 euros per person, it gets cheaper the more tickets you buy) and a conductor does come around to check that everyone has tickets. We have not seen that in any other country thus far.
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