In August 2021, Patricia and I took our first sabbatical and spend some time in Austria and the Alps. This part of the world truly lives up to the hype, and we look forward to the day we can return. If you would like to read more about this trip and what we learned, read my article The Art of Disappearing. I posted videos from the trip to this playlist.
On the way to Austria we had flight issues and were stuck in Paris for a few hours. So of course we explored the city and checked up on Notre Dame to see how the reconstruction is coming along. Looks pretty good compared to what happened to it!
Looking out our apartment window. Vienna was probably the quietest and cleanest city I have ever been to.
Towering cathedrals are common in Vienna. Our human sense of scale can hardly comprehend building something this massive, and turns our minds to the divine.
This beautiful church was right next to our apartment. Its amazing to think about people having worshiped in this space for the last nine hundred years!
These double doors were the entryway into a courtyard in the 1600s. They were specifically this tall so they could drive carriages inside. It is now a coffee shop (which easily serves the best coffee we've ever had, too).
All packed and ready to leave the apartment for the Alps!
A glimpse of the mountains through the clouds. This is looking across from another peak that's over seven thousand feet, so this mountain must be fairly tall.
We took our drone up with us and the footage from on top of these mountains is incredible. Definitely worth packing in! (I made a video about it; click the photo to view.)
A castle just over the border into Liechtenstein. I made a video here, about the interesting history of this place (watch by clicking on the photo).