Christmas at St. Stephansdom

While we were free to do anything for Christmas, we decided that a little bit of tradition might be nice. Are Christmas morning we headed to St. Stephansdom, one of the most famous churches in Vienna for a morning service. Somehow I thought that a Catholic Mass in German would remind me of Christmas at home. Wrong. Basically I was kind of cold, confused and tired most of the time. I had no idea what was going on because it was a Catholic Mass and it seemed a little ridiculous that we had to stand up and the cardinal need to take on and off his hat every time he stood up or sat down. That being said, it was an amazing choir and orchestra accompanying the service who were fantastic to hear. after an hour and a half we called it quits and snuck out during communion, with a fair amount of others joining us. It the beginning when we sang "O, Come all ye faithful," it was interesting, but the number of familiar hymns after that sank down to zero, and my interest along with it.

We headed home with small snow flurries falling around us, opened presents, and cooked up a very (not) traditional meal of mashed potatoes, peas and fajitas for Christmas dinner. It was certainly different than other Christmases, but great none the less.

Stephansdom, the Karlskirch, and the Belvedere

We started the day off with a trip to the Lower Belvedere to finish what we had started the day before. The Lower Belvedere has more modern contemporary pieces, which I didn't really care for but Anthony enjoyed. Afterward we headed over the Stephansdom, the main church in the city whose spires towers over the city's landscape. We decided to head to the South Tower, the taller of the two towers for the apparently spectacular views. The South towers is taller but lacks something important- an elevator. The stairway was a small, spiraling and dark. It would have been quite claustrophobic in the summer with more visitors, but luckily we only had to pass people in the other direction 2 or 3 times. The views were fantastic but we were definitely panting after 350 steps. We felt like we were so high above the city, but looking at the picture of the church, we were only halfway up the tower! The rest of the way isn't accessible, but I think I would have been scared to go much further.

We weren't even all the way up to the stop-off in the tower when I took this photo. The tiled roof is one of the coolest parts of St. Stephansdom.

The view we worked so hard for

This is the tower that we went up into. We were probably about even with where the covering/work outside finishes

On the way home we went to Karlskirch with another Christmas in front. Karlskirch is absolutely beautiful with a soaring ceiling and amazing frescoes. They have an elevator set up in the middle that leads up to a platform which then allows you to climb scaffolding staircases up to the the very top of the church. This allows a panoramic view of the city, a close up of the wonderful artwork and a serious case of vertigo.

Looking down from the scaffolding into the church

Up close you could really appreciate the paintings even more

With tired legs, we headed home after, have seen enough dizzying heights and content to stay on the ground for a while.