{day twenty seven}

happy valentines day! 

alles gute zum valentinstag!

i hope you all had the best of the best, because i know i did.

the day started out as any normal tuesday with my blessed german class. but then things got better with my art class because guess where we got to go? the belvedere! the belvedere is the summer palace of prince eugene of savoy. he was one of the most prestigious military commanders in the european army, even though he was only about 5 feet tall! he is such a respected man in vienna because of his conquering of the turks. there is an upper and lower palace, and they are both designed after the beautiful baroque style. 

the ever so famous eugene 

the upper palace

(the one we got to go in)

we weren't allowed to take any pictures inside which was a let down, because it was incredible inside! don't worry, i found a picture on google that does a decent job at giving you a taste of it magnificence.

this is the party room. as you can tell it's very baroque! frilly, fancy, pompous, ornate and any other synonyms you can think of! can you see those two men above the 2 outer windows? those represent the turks eugene had just conquered! (he liked to show of his accomplishments i think!) the cool thing about this room, is that it's painted to look like the roof is a dome, but really it's flat! we got to go up to that (horrid) blue room you can see through the windows and it was surprising to see how shallow the roof was. after walking around the palace, we went to the part of the belvedere that has been turned into an art museum. they have art from multiple artists including gustav klimt! 

(larn, i don't know if you read this but the whole time i was thinking, "the virgin... klimt" and couldn't help but laugh every time i heard  or saw his name! unfortunately, the virgin did not find itself at this museum.)

this is one of klimt's most famous paintings: the kiss.

our teacher asked us if we thought the woman was enjoying the kiss.

well, i'd sure say so!

she didn't think so.

what do you think?

this was probably my most favorite piece of art i saw at the belvedere. 

it's called "field of poppies."

poppies are my favorite flower, and this painting made me want to frolic in this field and then have a picnic in the middle of it.

after the belvedere i came home to do some laundry because quite frankly, i was all out of the necessities.  it wasn't very long before i had to leave again to go to the albertina! (an art museum) me and alexa were meeting one of our friends from church, dago, there to show us around. it's like 2 steps away from where we go to school so we met up there. and guess what dago brought us? flowers for valentines day! it was the cutest/nicest/sweetest thing! 

he thought paige was going to be there, so he brought her a flower too. she had stayed at the belvedere so he just went up to this old lady on the street and gave it to her and said happy valentines day! it was the cutest thing ever! 

the albertina

then we walked over to the albertina. i can't exactly remember who lived here but it used to be a type of palace. we started off in the rooms where they used to live and they were incredible. (we couldn't take pictures here either :( such a bummer!) but they were beautiful. then came my favorite part: we went and saw MONET'S paintings! he is one of my favorite artists, and impressionist artwork is my absolute favorite.

water lilies

house among the roses

(one my favorite that i saw!)

they also had a lot of work from magritte, and i really enjoyed that as well. 

there was so many beautiful paintings, i wanted to stay there all day.

but we couldn't, because we had to leave for what would soon become the best night of my life!

we went iceskating at rathaus! it's this HUGE iceskating rink right outside of this beautiful building. it's not just your average circular iceskating rink though. there are pathways all through the trees that connect two rinks! there's one right by the building, and then the smaller one that you can see in this picture. they place music and have colorful lights shining on the ice.

i had a blast! and i wanted to stay all the night long.

plus, i only fell once!

(it hurt real bad, but so worth it!)

the weather was great, i was perfectly warm the whole time.

paige.alexa&me 

aly.paige.alexa&me

aly.alexa&me

just iceskating through a forest in vienna

the whole group!

we had a blast

:)

the parliament building in front of the other ice skating rink

me.oliver.paige.ekarin&zach

the beautiful rathaus

zach&alexa being all cool on their iceskates

paige skating down the hill through the forest!

zach.paige&me

best night ever

:)

we hadn't eaten dinner yet, so guess where we went? yep that's right, mcdonalds. it was close and it was warm, don't hate! and it was really delish. sometimes you just need that comfort food of home.

 it was an absolutely perfect valentines day in every way!