Christmas in Vienna (4) - Palaces, Museums, Public Buildings and One Last Christmas Market!

Vienna was a beautiful city to spend Christmas in...so romantic and dream-like

Here I am in front of the beautiful St. Peter's Church where we attended a service on Christmas Day.  It is very beautiful inside as well and is right in the heart of the Altstadt of Vienna. It was constructed between 1702-1732. It is thought to be the oldest Christian sacred site in Vienna and was where Charlemagne was thought to have founded a larger church in the year 792

The Vienna Rathaus in the day.

...and with lots of sparkle at night

Our last Christmas market for the year was at Maria Theresa's Schönbrunn Palace. Since the German speaking world tends to celebrate Christmas on 2 days instead of 1, we were able to see this on the 26th! Billy was totally shopped out and was only interested in listening to the brass band play carols.

I could have definitely gone for more of these wonderful wooden ornaments for my tree in Chattanooga next year.

 What a beautiful place this is... and it was amazingly well-kept.  There was a large renovation project going on and we had a wonderful tour guide that gave us SO much more information than you are used to getting on most tours.

This structure is called "Gloriette" and houses a cafe. Our feet were worn completely out, so we didn't make the trip to have a coffee there. This is at the back of the palace and it is what you see
from the balcony in the previous picture.

We got this perfect view of Vienna from
The Upper Belvedere Museum.
It was lit
as if it were a movie set
...perfectly.

The view of Vienna makes in obvious why the site was chosen for this palace.

I was able to see some wonderful art pieces here and Billy seemed to really enjoy it too.  I had grown up seeing Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" and I couldn't believe that I was actually getting to see it!

There were several museums I wanted to see here, but there was only so much time!