Captured Moments… Vienna, Austria

If you’ve read some of my recent posts, you know I’ve spent a week in Austria, and celebrated the New Year’s Eve there. (Austria, the one with no kangaroos. 😛 It’s actually a big joke there, you can buy t-shirts that say NO KANGAROOS IN AUSTRIA. :’))

Anyway, Vienna is more than beautiful, so it would be a shame not to share some photos from my trip with you. Hope you’ll like them!

After a day of just walking around, one day was spent entirely on two museums – The Art History Museum and The Natural History Museum. Both were amazing! And the buildings themselves are beautiful, too.

The Natural History Museum had a lot of dinosaur-related exhibits. If you knew how much I love dinosaurs, you’d know how excited I was! (I wanted to be a paleonthologist when I was a child. Well, I still do…) And the Allosaur that moves and growls… I wanted to take it home! XD

There was also a part of the museum dedicated to space, and it was quite magical, but impossible to photograph well.

And since it was night by the time we left the museum, we could enjoy seeing it coloured with light. There was a small Christmas Village between the museums so everything looked very cute and festive. It was easy to forget about the cold.

Now, off to the city itself! Honesty, I wanted to take picture of every building I saw. XD Here’s just a few to show you why:

Wagner’s apartments:

The Secession Bulding, an exhibition hall built in 1897 by Joseph Maria Olbrich as an architectural manifesto for the Vienna Secession artists:

The beautiful Parliament, with the statue of the goddess of victory, Nike:

City Hall and the Christmas Village in front of it, it looked really lovely:

And the prettiest ever – the Hundertwasserhaus, an expressionst apartment house built after the idea and concept of Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser with architect Joseph Krawina as a co-author:

The shops inside were also gorgeously decorated. It was like a little town of its own.

KunstHausWien was also designed by Hundertwasser. It now hold an exhibition of his work, but also hosts temporary exhibitions of other artists. And it’s amazingly pretty, of course:

And, oh, the palaces! Belvedere…

…and Schönbrunn.

Beautiful Vienna… It was really hard to pick among the many pictures I’ve taken, but I think these give you a nice overview of my trip. Yes, it was cold, but not too cold, and I’m from coastal part of Croatia so I’m really not used to cold. We managed to see everything we wanted, and escaped just before it got very, very cold. XD From now on, whenever I think of Vienna, nice, warm memories of this trip will come to my mind. ❤

Captured Moments… Dublin

As promised, I finally made a post about my trip to Dublin. I have previously written a post about my tour to Northern Ireland, but writing a post about Dublin proved to be much more difficult. I spent five days there, so many pictures were taken. XD

I’ll start with this image of a beautiful Georgian door. Dublin is known for these colorful doors and they really look lovely!

My first impression of Dublin was actually this gorgeous view:

Here you can see the Jeanie Johnston ship, with the Samuel Beckett bridge and Poolbag chimneys in the background. Jeanie Johnston is the kind of ship Irish people travelled on when they left for America during the Great Famine. It’s hard to imagine crossing the entire ocean like that… But it’s such a beautiful ship!

The next big “stop” was the Dublin Castle. I’m a bit obsessed with old castles, the older the better. XD

The inside is pretty as well. 🙂

The Christ Church Cathedral is another beautiful place to see.

Just behind the Cathedral, lies Dublinia. Dublinia has this amazing exhibition about the history of Dublin, and the people who lived there. Did you even know that Dublin was founded by the Vikings? So, yes, if you’re obsessed with the Vikings as I am, Dublinia is definitely the place to visit. 😉

Then, of course, there’s Trinity College, with its amazing library.

One of Dublin’s famous monuments is the Spire of Dublin, also known as the Monument of Light. It’s really impressive to see it in person. It seems like it’s touching the sky.

Another monument I have to show you is the Oscar Wilde Sculpture. I love it so much! Look how relaxed he looks, with a cynical smile on his lips. Just amazing!

I would also recommmend visiting Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, even if you don’t want to do any shopping. It looks so beautiful!

I also went to see Once, the musical, when I was in Dublin, and it was amazing! I saw the movie quite some time ago, but I think I enjoyed the musical even more. And the special thing about this musical is that before the beginning and during the break, the stage becomes a bar so you can climb up and grab a drink. It was so fun to be on that stage!

And now I’ll leave you with a few more pictures od the streets of Dublin. It’s a very lively city, and you can’t experience its beauty only through its landmarks. I’ll start with the photo of the old man who was dancing while the street musicians played. He stole the show. XD

Hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂

Captured Moments… Northern Ireland

So, as I mentioned in a previous post, I went on a vacation to Ireland this summer. We were staying in Dublin, but we also made two bus tours outside the city. The first one was to Northern Ireland, so I decided to dedicate this post just to that one tour. It would be to much to fit everything in just one post. 😉

Anyway, we left Dublin early in the morning, 7:30. It was a quiet ride until the first stop – the Dark Hedges.

Now, if this isn’t gorgeous, I don’t know what is. The hedges were planted by the Stuart family in the eighteenth century. It was intended to impress visitors as they approached the entrance to their home, which I think they succeeded in. And, yes, Game of Thrones was filmed there.

The next stop was wonderful as well – Carrick-A-Rede island which is connected to the coast by a rope bridge.

It was really fun to cross it! And the nature there was perfect.

That’s me in the last photo, trying to make my own version of Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. XD

The next stop was at the Giant’s Causeway – the 37,000 basalt columns whose tops form “stepping stones” leading from the cliff foot and disappearing under the sea. It’s a real wonder of nature! The legend says it was built by the giant Finn McCool who wanted to cross over to Scotland to fight the Scottish giant. The Scottish giant proved to be much bigger than Finn, so he ran away and hid himself in his son’s nursery. When the Scottish giant came and saw how big the baby was, he deduced that its father must be enormus, so he ran away, destroying the causeway behind him.

That’s me and my brother frowning behind me. XD

And finally, we had a little bit of time to walk around Belfast. The city is very beautiful, both old and modern, unfortunately we didn’t have the time to see much of it.

We were back in Dublin in the evening, a little before 9 p.m. And I plan to take you to Dublin as well, soon. 😉

Going to Ireland :)

So, just a little update from me. Tomorrow morning I’m going on a trip to Ireland! Yaaay! Anyway, this means I’ll be absent from my blog for eight days. I might still have some time to browse my Reader page, but not as much… I promise to bring you some pictures! 🙂

I’m leaving you with a couple of photos from my previous trip, to Scotland. Enjoy the loveliness:

Colourful Edinburgh.

Beautiful Edinburgh.

Castle in the distance.

Magical nature.