Florence

The next stop on my travels was Italy again, this time to Florence. I had wanted to visit this beautiful city for a long time and living in Austria gave me the perfect opportunity to do so, as it was only a few train journeys away.

It was great to explore the city on foot seeing all the different sites. The one thing that wasn't so good was that the Uffizi gallery was far too crowded for my liking. However, I loved my weekend there, and I had lots of opportunities to take photos.

Here are some pictures from the main cathedral in Florence. Unfortunately there was some work being done on the building so it wasn't as photogenic as it normally is, but it was still a very impressive sight!

This is a photo of the Ponte Vecchio, taken from a window of the Uffizi gallery. I had an amazing view from there!

Palazzo Vecchio

The walled garden in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. This was a really tranquil and beautiful place.

Florence is a very unique city with so much culture and beauty. I'm happy that I had the chance to see it at least once in my lifetime!

Vienna and Bratislava

Back in October, all the British Council English language assistants in Austria were invited to Vienna for a tea party at the British Embassy. I took advantage of this great opportunity to spend a few days in the city and also to take a day trip to Bratislava.

Vienna was really grand and magnificent with beautiful architecture and so many things to see. The highlight of my trip was the Belvedere Palace, where you can find numerous great works of art including "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt.

I also went to the Schönbrunn Palace, another grand palace in Vienna where the Austrian royal family used to live. Inside you can look around some of the rooms and listen to information about the members of the family.

Other amazing sights included Stephansdom...

...the Hofburg Palace...

...plus many other interesting places around the city.

Bratislava was also a great capital city to visit. It is worth mentioning that I have a bucket list goal to visit every single country in Europe as well as every continent in the world. As of today, I have been to 18 of the 47 European sovereign states (19 if you count going to Portugal inside my mum's tummy a few months before I was born!) and 2 of the 6 inhabitable continents (Europe obviously and North America). I hadn't been to Slovakia before so I was excited to find out that it was just an hour away from Vienna on the train. Bratislava was a very pretty city and it was cool to tick another country off my list!

In the centre of the old town, you can find Hlavné Námestie, a very picturesque square.

The other famous square in the city is Hviezdoslavovo Námestie, which contains the Slovak National Theatre.

My favourite part of Bratislava was definitely the castle, which is like something out of a fairytale. It is also up quite a steep hill, so you have great views over the city from up there.

I had an amazing time exploring both of these capital cities which happen to be so close. If you ever visit one of them, it's very much worth the while taking a trip to the other one!

Udine

Today I will write about the weekend I spent in Udine in Italy back in October for my birthday (which seems a very long time ago now).

Udine is only a couple of hours away on the train from where I'm living in Kärnten. But everything there seemed so different - the language, the architecture, even the weather was warmer! This is what I really like about living in continental Europe. You can explore so many countries, all with a different language and culture, so easily.

One great thing about Udine is that it's a small city and all the important sights are right next to each other, so it is very easy to explore on foot. (However it is a bit of a climb to get to the castle!) It is also not too touristic so you can look around without feeling pushed and shoved.

Now for some pictures of this beautiful city:

The cathedral

Piazza della Libertà (Unfortunately, my photos don't really do it justice!)

Porticato del Lippomano

The city hall

Arco Bollani

The castle

A nice park near the train station


Udine is not the best known city in Italy, but it is definitely worth a visit!

My New Town

I have been living in Feldkirchen in Kärnten for three and a half weeks now, and I have to say I like it quite a lot. There's not much going on here, but it's a nice town. It has supermarkets, various shops, cafés, restaurants and a train station all within walking distance, which is a huge improvement for me from the tiny village where I live in England!

I'm living in a very nice little apartment within a house (with a cat!), I'm finding my job as an English Language Assistant interesting, and I have plenty of free time to travel around the local area and beyond. So life is pretty good at the moment!

Here are some pictures that I've taken around Feldkirchen:

The view from my apartment

The view from outside my schools

The Hauptplatz

A pretty church

A weird but cool sculpture in the town centre

And another pretty church!


My next post will be coming soon and will probably be about Udine in Italy!

Salzburg

It has been a while since I last updated this blog, but I have been very busy since coming to Austria. I can't believe I only arrived in Salzburg three and a half weeks ago! I only got to spend a couple of days in this great city, but I loved the time I spent there.

After Salzburg, I moved on to a ski resort called Saalbach-Hinterglemm to do a training course with the other English Language Assistants, before arriving in Kärnten, the region where I am now living and working, at the end of September. There is a lot to see and do in this beautiful part of Austria, and there will be blog posts about it coming soon, as well as about the trip to Italy I managed to squeeze in last weekend!

But firstly, Salzburg...

So here I had the opportunity to take a tour seeing the sights from one of my favourite movies: The Sound of Music! (Strangely, it turns out that this is not a famous film at all in Austria). Here are some of the highlights from this amazing day...

Hohensalzburg castle

The lake at the front of the Von Trapp house. But the house isn't the one used in the movie!

The path from "I Have Confidence"

The gazebo from "Sixteen Going on Seventeen"

Not from the film, but a great view from the side of the road!

The outside of the church in Mondsee where the wedding scene was filmed...

...and the inside!

Pics from the Mirabell Palace and gardens where "Do Re Mi" was filmed


And here are some non-Sound-of-Music-related pics from my trip:

A pretty church...

...and another one!

Mozart's house...

...and his place of birth. (It is a bit weird that there is a Spar there!)

A street in Mondsee

The lake in Mondsee


More posts coming soon...