I was visiting a friend of mine in Vienna for the Easter holidays. Here are two things I did which I liked a lot – visiting the Karlskirche (St. Charles’s Church) and the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History). If you ever go to Vienna I recommend that you explore them, too (the Arcimboldo exhibition in the museum lasts until 1 June 2008).

Karlskirche:

The Karlskirche is supposed to be the most beautiful baroque church in Vienna, but that is not the reason why I liked it so much and feel the need to tell you about it. No, the reason why it excites me is the panorama lift that takes you to vertiginous heights to give you a really great view of the fresco paintings on the ceiling (also over the city, but with all the security wire netting occluding and limiting the view it was not really worth it). Usually, a normal visitor will never have the opportunity to see these paintings at such a close distance, but here the scaffolds that had been used for previous restoration works had been preserved to take visitors upstairs (not sure how long they will stay though, seems like they have been around for a while though).

The lift takes you to a platform, from there you have to take stairs (they look the same as the stairs in the first picture ) to reach the top. Let me just tell you, if you’re not a fan …