The upside of restoration

A day of museums and long walks through gardens and parks with a stop for gelato where the shop owner's best friend was from St. Cloud, Minnesota. Playing on my crutches outside of a church. Seeing 150 year-old composers alive on the street. Being disappointed the opera house was closed. Night photos in another amazing gothic church and inappropriate exclamations in the midst of it all. A few more unintended detours, and in accordance with the trip's theme, more romantic moments at cafes over dessert and espresso.

After a long walk to the Belvedere Museum to see the Egon Scheile and Gustav Klimt New Art Group exhibition, we made our way to Karlskirche, a church with two allegoric columns reminiscent of the column of Trajan. (...A reference that needs only to be understood by those of us who stayed awake during art history class.)

We passed Mozart on our way in (I thought he was dead, didn't you?) and found the frescoes were being restored. The really cool part of this was that we got to take the elevator up to the dome, walk about on the scaffolding. There were about three more flights of stairs to the top of the dome if you wanted to look out from the windows over the city. No crutches and broken ankle were about to stop me from seeing the frescoes up so close, so we climbed all the way up. Definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity.