things i'm grateful for: christmas 2011

" there is some amicable jostling among the duffel coats to get to the front of the queue (it is not easy to fight in mittens), all of us eager to get our hands on a piece of the stallholder's hot toast with its waves of molten cheese. there are few moments more perfect than the one that finds you biting into blistering cheese on toast while snowflakes fall on your eyelashes." - observer.co.uk, nigel slater

we reached the neue burg wing of the hofburg.

this palace has housed one of the most powerful empires in europe, the habsburgs, starting in 1279 to 1918.


here's charles of austria for you.er, the horse of charles, anyway.hee.

just turn 90 degrees, and you will see prince eugene of savoy.

we walked a little bit and crossed a pedestrian road.

lo and behold, there was another christmas village! this was the one right off ringstrasse, on maria-theresien-platz.

if you must know, ringstrasse is a wide, tree-lined boulevard that encircles the innere stadt.

but we were here mainly for this festive market! oh-la-la!

and a little trivia for you movie buffs out there, this spot was one of the locations in one-of-the-best-movies ever "before sunrise."

jesse and celine strolled on this very square!

so after much inner (pa-simple) hyperventilating lest upsetting baby and mr t who were happily munching on schnitzel, we went a little further down the road. we discovered the museumsquartier or mq where baby had such fun running about!

it is a large cultural complex which houses museums like the museum of modern art.

this was actually another christmas market! it was very modern-looking, and for a while i thought they were greenhouses! lol.

they only opened during the night to cater for the night owls, i guess.

there was this photo installation which made you feel like somebody was talking to you.baby and i were transfixed for a few minutes, but we were weirded out so we walked away without really fully understanding what it meant! haha. we cannot really pretend to be art enthusiasts.

we just took a leisurely walk around the area.it was just one amazing structure after another.

it was awesome.

unlike florence where i almost had vertigo from all the art and unlike rome where i felt so overwhelmed by the history, vienna was just a breathe of glorious fascination.

vienna is beautiful and amazingly so.

this little alleyway held a secret.can you guess what it is? you'll find out...next!