Vienna day 3

Today was mostly just a chill out, get caught up on the blog, and catch a night train -day. It had an added event which I'll post in a minute.

We took the train down to St. Stephan's to take a catacomb tour and the cathedral itself was unreal. Not quite as big as the one in Prague, but equally as grand. Tall, sweeping pillars, large stain glass scenes and a organ that spanned the entire width on an upper level.

The catacomb tour was crazy too. It starts in the rooms where the coffins of the bishops are kept, then moves into the crypt of the Hafburgs (the royal family of Vienna) which has not only their coffins but also rows of copper bins that hold their organs from their embalming. It then goes through a large room of old sculptures and the original pendulum used to ring the bells - a 800kg (1700lb) wooden piece that the guide jokes anyone if free to take (hahahahahha, so funny...not really). From there we move down into the general population crypt where we learned about how int he 1700s the crypt was getting so full that the smell of the dead was actually seeping into the church, driving down attendance. To fix it, the church forced prisoners to clean all the "leftovers off the bones and throw them down into the second level. There was also story about more bones being cast down a deep shaft so the space could be used as a bomb shelter during WWII.

(Side note - this is why I'm getting cremated. Do you want your bones dug up 400yrs later and thrown wherever the hell someone decides? No thanks. Cast me into the ocean and I'll be good.)

For lunch we had bratwurst that fortunately did not ruin my view of Johnsonville Brats. Props to Johnsonville for not making crappy American version of the brat.

Tonight it's off to Venice and then on to Cinque Terre.