Street Art on the Danube

Below are a few photos of the graffiti on the banks of the Danube river which runs through Vienna - being obsessed with street art it was impossible for me to pass by without taking these.

 xoxo

Travel | Vienna and Salzburg, Austria

It was my mum's birthday a few weeks ago so my dad took us to Vienna and Salzburg for five days - two places we were desperate to visit as we're a family of music-lovers. 

Photos..

^ In the Saltzburg food market near the Mirabelle palace gardens (which was where the steps were for a dancing scene in The Sound of Music)

Things you kind of have to do when in Vienna/Salzburg:

Vienna:
1. Visit the Haus der Musik - it's this amazing music museum, but before you rule this out thinking it's some kind of library with histories of composers and old manuscripts to observe (like I thought it would be), it was actually really different and had an interesting focus on sound in general, like the science of sound and how we interpret it. Loads of the rooms were filled with interactive activities involving pitch, frequency, tone and layering different sounds and the weird thing was that it wasn't even music like we know it - the sounds they used were completely random eg. the sound of writing, building works or the everyday street sounds in different cities (I just made this look so boring but I promise you it wasn't.

2. Visit the Winter and Summer palaces because the state rooms are beautiful and you actually learn a lot about the aristocracy of Mozart's time i.e late 1700s, which was actually much more interesting than I anticipated (coming from someone who generally finds history before 1800 dull and irrelevant)

3. Go to the state opera house; the inside of it is so ornate that it's worth going even if you're not seeing an opera (we were lucky enough to see Don Giovanni (Mozart) on our last night, although we had to bargain with the dodgy last-minute ticket sellers outside the building who were pretty drunk, smoking heavily and speaking total nonsense in broken English, which was stressful (worth it though)

4. Go on the ferris wheel that overlooks the whole of Vienna. It's really special - we went at night but I think during the day would be amazing as well. Apparently you can even have a 4 course dinner in your own private car if you're a millionaire (thumbs up)

5. The Leopold Museum and the Vienna Modern Art Museum are always there with various different exhibitions (we went to the Leopold and saw some Schiele and a bit of Klimt which was the well-known thing in the area)

Salzburg:

1. Visit the Mozart houses (there's his childhood home and then one from his later years). They are quite touristy but you kind of have to if you're in his home town..

2. Go cycling along the Danube because why not

3. Climb up to the medieval fortress and view the whole of the city from above (the fortress itself is a bit dull, but the view is absolutely amazing)

4. Visit one of the traditional coffee houses - the coffee in Salzburg/Vienna is 100x better than in London, as much as we all love Starbucks ;) Also, the specialities in both towns are schnitzel and apple strudel (both mentioned in These are a few of my Favourite Things) which are both delicious so that's pretty compulsory.

Okay I'm done here.
Thanks for reading
xoxo