For our first and only full day in Vienna, we started the morning off at Hundertwasserhaus. The apartment building with the colourful facade was designed by Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. As the building is outside of the city centre, I was a little surprised by the amount of people already there when we arrived early morning. Aside from admiring the building from the outside (it’s still in use as a residential building), there’s also a little village ‘mall’ with numerous gift shops and a gallery that you can visit. 

Once we left the area, we took the tram over to Stephansplatz and made a visit to its namesake cathedral, the Stephansdom. Since it was a Sunday morning there was church service happening, so we could only see a part of the interior. However my main reason for going was to climb the south tower. 

After paying the €5 admission, we began our climb to the top. The spiral staircase seemed like it was never-ending and I had to stop couple of times to catch my breath. However, the view was definitely worth it as it was beautiful seeing the city from above. The south tower also has the best views of ornately patterned roof of the church. 

As we still had some time before lunch, we took the subway over to Volkstheater and walked around the surrounding museum district. There are quite a few art galleries and museums in the area and it would take days to properly see the entire collection of works. Instead we spent time exploring the pathways and the gardens, and also saw the statue of Mozart before we left. 

By around 12:30pm, I was back at Stephansplatz waiting to meet Therese for lunch. It was a little unfortunate I wasn’t able to meet Helga as well on this trip, but it was super nice spending time with Therese. It’s such a coincidence that both of us lived in Japan for a year and we’re both graphic designers! 

I’m not entirely sure what I ate for lunch, but it was another variation of meat and potatoes. =P

After I bid farewell to Therese I headed over to the last spot of the day, the Belvedere. The Belvedere is separated into the Upper and Lower buildings, plus the Belvedere 21 which is a contemporary art gallery. The main highlight of the Belvedere is Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss painting, which is housed in the Upper building. Seeing the painting up close was really impressive, as it is a lot bigger than what it looks in pictures. Overall we spent about two hours inside and it was ample time to get through most of the collection. 

Vienna was incredibly welcoming and I was happy to meet up with friends in the short amount of time I was there. And as much as I enjoyed the city, I was really looking forward to our trip to Salzburg the next day. =P