The Family Jewels

Trip Start May 25, 2007
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Trip End Oct 29, 2007


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Flag of Austria  ,
Monday, August 27, 2007

I was feeling better, so I finally made my way to the middle of town to see the sights. The Parliament, City Hall, the Theater, the opera house. I checked out the gothic St Stephen's Cathedral, and the fancy baroque St. Peter's. Then I headed to the Hofburg Palace.

Used by the Hapsburgs, it is now a series of museums. The Ephesus museum has a decent but not jaw-dropping collection of info and artifacts from the ancient Greek city of Ephesus (now in western Turkey). I also really enjoyed the museum of Musical Instruments,  it was full of the old, beautiful, wierd and wonderful. A real treat was the Arms and Armour museum. There they had a huge collection of ceremonial and battle used armor. Sadly we weren't able to dress up in it and start smashing each other. That would have been really fun.

But the star attraction was the Treasury. Here they have the vast collection of all the sparkly valuables the Hapsburgs collected over the centuries. It is staggering to consider the value of everything in that building. Hundreds of millions, easy, if you could even put a price on it. If you ever are just passing through Vienna and can only see one thing, the Treasury should not be missed.
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