Vienna Day 3! I want to be Emperor of Rome just to wear the crown

Our first stop today was the Vienna National Treasury which used to be all of the treasure that belonged to Vienna royalty, and now it is a public museum. There were jewels galore, some clothing worn by emperors and knights and such, a unicorn (narwhal) horn, and crowns. Beautiful crowns with enormous jewels. It was pretty cool.

Today was a Catholic holiday (Corpus Christi), and we just happened to be right next to the church where the precession stopped for mass. We got to see the procession of people singing, and then listen to the mass (which we couldn't understand because it was in German haha). They had a band as well which was lovely.

As a little side note, right next to the church is the stables of the famous white horses in Vienna that come out for shows and things like that, and we got to see some of them in their stables. I wanted to get a good picture, but I only got like half of one of their heads lol.

Our next destination was the State Opera House. We sat outside and learned about Alma Mahler (blog post up about her!). 

After that we headed to the Vienna Natural History museum! It was actually really cool, there were SO many rocks. Rooms and rooms and rooms of rocks. Name a rock and it was there. This museum also has Venus de Willendorf, which is one of the oldest pieces of art/representations of women that exists. It is estimated to have been created around 22-24,000 BCE. CRAZY. There was also a lot of fossils, land and sea, and some animatronic dinosaurs.

On our way back to the hotel I got a very yummy tomato, mozarella, pesto sandwich. Slay.

Later that evening, we had a group appointment with an LDS woman who is a violin/viola/cello maker. We visited her shop and she talked about her education to become a violin maker and what she does. It was so wonderful and she also talked about what it's like to be a woman business owner and mother. We also found out that one of her violins costs 13-15 THOUSAND euros. Absolutely insane, but it makes sense because just one violin takes 200 working hours to make, and she only makes one a year. She does a lot of repairs and things like that as well. Insane.

After the violin shop, a large group of us went to... FIVE GUYS. How American can we get, I know I know, and I hate to say it but it was so good and I have no regrets. The burger and cajun fries hit so good and they had a soda fountain with refills and as much ice as you want. I was basically in heaven.

On our way back to the hotel, we walked through the pretty garden we walked through on the first night, but we went a different path and got to see Sisi's (Empress Elizabeth) statue and a really pretty little pool. It's so beautiful here!