Visit Date: 11/21/2023. It was a long and exhausting but incredible day. It started with arriving at 8 in the morning, pulling up to the docks a short ways outside of the city center of Vienna. We took a tour bus around the main street that rings all the old town city center, before being dropped off near the main St. Stephen’s Cathedral. We toured around more learning about the sights, before ending up in the cute little Christmas Market of the Maria Theresa Plaza.

After it turned out that some of the museums we were planning to do were closed, we decided instead to walk over to the main market at the Town Hall center, one of the prettiest we’ve ever seen. Along the way we passed the impressive Austrian Parliament building and stopped for pictures. The decorations and themes and lights were incredible. After a while, we began to head back towards the first market, to grab a neat little boot shaped Christmas mug.

On the way back however, we noticed the Parliament building was open for visits, so we decided to hop in, just like in the Hungarian Parliament. While we were there, there was a live session being held by the elected representatives so we could not visit the chamber, but the tourist center there is very neat.

After that we spent some more time wandering around the city looking at the sights, before heading back to the town hall market. However as we approached noticed constant loud police sirens blaring in strange patterns, and it kept happening. So of course, the only natural and intelligent thing to do when hearing lots and lots of police sirens and seeing hordes of police up ahead was to get closer and find out what was going on. We found simply that it was a group of climate protestors shutting down the streets and city trams immediately in front of the of Parliemant building. We finished off the day wandering back through the old town to see all the lights and decorations at night, discovering some smaller markets.