Holiday Travels

As the weather cools down, I am getting so excited for the holidays and wintertime. The year has flown by and I cannot believe it is only a couple more weeks until Thanksgiving! There are so many signs that the holidays are coming: stores have updated their merchandise, my Pinterest page is full of holiday baking recipes and sweater/boot outfits, and Christmas music is already being suggested for me on iTunes radio.
My family loves to travel during the holidays and last year we took a 14-hour plane ride to Austria. When we arrived, we were expecting a winter wonderland where all the buildings and streets would be covered with white snow. However, for the week and half we were there, all it did was rain. Despite the rain, we were able to enjoy all that the city could offer.
We spent most of our trip in Vienna. The first day we visited Schloss Schönbrunn, the Schönbrunn palace. The massive palace has over 1,400 rooms and the gardens extend over 2 kilometers. We spent the entire day touring the apartments in which the Hapsburg family lived and reigned. It was so interesting to see the extravagance of the royal family.
Because it was Christmas time, Vienna had tons of Christkindlmarkts. These are the traditional Christmas markets that are held in almost all of the town squares. Hundreds of vendors gather to sell ornaments, chocolates, crafts and the famous Glühwein (a hot cider/wine concoction). My mom and I tried a couple of different flavors of the Glühwein, but did not end up liking any of them. We did however love the crepe vendors and the wafflehaus!
In Vienna, we also got to see some of the beautiful architecture around the city. Vienna is known for its music and arts, so there are plenty of museums and opera houses to tour. This picture was taken outside the Vienna Opera House. We were not able to go see a show because no one in my family had packed black tie attire! The opera houses are very strict on their dress codes. We were not even allowed inside with our winter gear!
My favorite part of the trip was actually our 2-day adventure to Salzburg. We got to go on the Sound of Music tour and see where the movie was actually filmed back in 1965. It was a beautiful tour and we ended up going to the lake region, which was absolutely stunning. Our tour director told us that a majority stakeholder in Volkswagen, Porsche, and Redbull lived in a mansion at the top of one of the mountains.
I would definitely go back to Austria, because I would love to see how beautiful it must be in the summertime! The place is full of culture and the people are so friendly. And I cannot forget how amazing the apfelstrudel (apple strudel) was!
--Krista Castro