Hi everyone!
Here I am, in Salzburg! Thought I'd give you all an update on what I'm doing :) And I've been waiting for detailed posts on what you guys are doing with pictures... so chop chop! Haha
So I don't believe I told you about anything that we did yesterday except my morning trip to Starbucks! But after that we realized we had about 45 mins before we had to meet up with our group so we decided to stop by this place called Ring King. It's a shop of a jeweler that were are hoping to get to go to on our trip, but at that time Tate hadn't scheduled it yet. We were worried we may not have time to go so we wanted to go by ourselves to check it out and luckily its about a block from our apartment. So anyways we checked it out and told the man there, Max (he's the owner and designer), that we were with Tate's group and we wanted to come early. He showed us his rings merchandise and they are all so cool! He is a custom designer too so he makes rings, mostly, for his clients and can pretty much make exactly what you want! Anyways of course I found one that I love! And I can't think of a more perfect souvenir from my trip! I won't tell you which one I like (I haven't bought it yet... turns out we are scheduled to meet him on Thursday), so you'll have to wait and see! It's a surprise!
Anyways after that we went to meet up with the group in front of St. Stephens. Tate had a surprise for us! So we went around the back of the building and into this little door and up a couple of stairs and... around the corner.... was more stairs... and more stairs... hahaha okay enough of that! The surprise was that we were going to walk up the spiral staircase to about halfway up the steeple to see out over the whole city of Vienna!!! It was amazing!!!! We could see so far and it was sooo pretty! However walking up and back down was not fun. The steeps were very steep, and in a tight spiral and they were stone so when your going up, if you look up you see the underside of a stone spiral staircase and its only a couple feet above my head. I was definitely getting claustrophobic and nervous. Oh and did I mention? There was 400 steps to the top. Wowwweee! But it was so nice at the top :) There was a little store so you could buy ice water and such in the room at the top (which by the way wasn't all the way at the top but about halfway.
After St. Stephens, we went to meet the violin maker, Cai. He has a last name too but I don't know how to spell it. Anyways that was wayyyyy cool. He has this little shop on the second floor of a building in a small courtyard. The courtyard is actually owned by the monastery around here (don't know what that's called either) and when you stepped into the courtyard literally all the sounds and bustling of the busy streets disappeared and it was completely silent. It was so cool and eerie and holy and many other things haha.
So we went inside and got to talk with Cai for a while. He told us all about how he makes violins and cellos and violas. It was so interesting. He said it takes him 5 months to make each one and they sell for $17,000! He also let us each have a bridge... its the small wooden piece that holds the strings up. He had over 2000 of them so we each got to pick one!
After that Deanna, Christina and me went back to this one bookstore so I could get a book I had my eye on. It's a logos book thats very nice. However I may end up returning it if i want to get the ring. I have to decide. But after that we headed home and just hung out for a little bit until we had to get ready for the Opera! We all met up at Tate's flat before the Opera for h'ordeovres (sp?) and champagne :) And we got a little background on the story. We saw Tosca, it's a tragedy by Puccini. I thought that was really cool too. We had nose bleed seats but we could still see pretty well and it was all in italian, so we had these small screens in front of our seats that would translate it to english for us. Plus it was in the Vienna State Opera House which we pass by everyday and it's beautiful!
Anyways, after the opera, we headed home to pack for Salzburg and get to bed early. Today is Saturday... and I haven't yet told you about Friday, but I have to go because we are starting our second day in Salzburg! I think were going to some museums. I'll try to write more later, maybe one post about the Salzburg trip.
I want to try and skype tonight with you guys! I hope you can have time around dinnertime ish? I'll text you.
xo Julie
P.S. don't text me during the day because if you text me when I don't have wifi, then you will be charged a lot for the text. So just wait for me to text you :)
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