Museum Hopper

After Vienna/Wien, we took the train over to Salzburg.  Jason planned most of this stop, which was much appreciated.  One goal was to truly experience Sound of Music AND Mozart !  I think he did a wonderful job achieving both!   We rented bikes and went out to Schloss Hellbrunn .  It was about a twenty minute ride out there; it was also the most upright we had ridden in forever!   There were a few key items to see at Schloss Hellbrunn : The gazebo/glass house from Sound of Music The trick fountains The museum  A little history on the schloss -- it was built as a pleasure castle for entertainment during the day.  It actually had no bedrooms! Let me start with the numerical order although this does not align with how we actually spent our time!  We did get to see it!  It was covered with lots of tourists who were also on their own Sound of Music pilgrimage.  Jason even mentioned to get a picture with no one else in it!  This is where they sing "I am sixteen going on s

On Monday, we headed to the Belvedere !  What a beautiful museum.  It is composed of two main buildings plus some outliers.  It is within the city of Vienna.   We only went to the upper building.  Outside the building, they had a number of pieces by the Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei.  I love his art and have now seen it in a number of venues. Most of his art that I have seen is paintings.  This was all "sculptures" or other 3-D art, which was cool. Below is a picture of life jackets made to look like lotus flowers to represent the refugee crisis.  Unfortunately, we could not take picture of the rest of the art since it was in the museum.   I wanted to go there to see the Klimt masterpieces again.  I had not seen many of them since early in the creation of this blog (one of the first ten posts!!).  I saw them when I had visited the  Neue Gallery  in New York City.   think this museum had the highest concentration of paintings on my " 1001 paintings " ever --

After visiting the Kunsthistoriches Museum, we walked five minutes to the Albertina Gallery.   We had one painting to check off the list in the Albertina, The Hare .  It is by Albrecht Durer.  It is so simple and yet so detailed and precise.  As you look closely, I got taken in by how realistic it is.  Many theories exist how he painted the details -- perhaps he captured this rabbit and used it as a model.  This rabbit seems to be a bit of a mascot for Vienna.  They have large ones all over the city! The gallery had great exhibits going on.   The " Monet to Picasso " exhibit was fantastic.  What wasn't to like.  After the Kunsthistoriches, it seemed so bright and cheerful.  This was a great preview of the modern era of art.   I really liked this Monet and Degas paintings.  I love the colors and the texture of the paintings.  It is a great summary of the modern painting era. They also had an exhibit on " Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh: Ways of Pointillism

Our first museum visit of this trip was the Kunsthistoriches Museum Wien.  I may not sure we (the world) are insistent on renaming countries or cities.  Wien is what the local Viennese call their city.  This is their main museum.  It is across from an identical building, which houses their natural history museum.   The entrance to the museum is beautiful.  As you come up the main staircase, it is hard to know where to look.  There is a beautiful statue and the murals on the ceiling are beautiful.  Klimt did the murals.  It is gorgeous.   I had a quick check-list of paintings we wanted to find.  They were all over the board in terms of era that they represented.  I liked the Pieter Bruegel the Elder paintings.  They were a lot lighter than I expected.  Unfortunately, the Rubens was on loan elsewhere.  I was disappointed that no where did they note that the painting was on loan.  My husband and I finally asked where it was.  The museum did an interesting job presenting the materia