Hiking

There are lots and lots of mountains here in Graz and I have been going hiking pretty frequently.  We go hike up here in some of these mountinans, maybe an hour or hour and a half of hiking uphill and look out over the whole city and see snow covered mountains in the background.  I wish I could put some of these photos on here!  Ryan and I went to a really nice church on really big hill the other day called Mariatrost.  If you go to google images and type in Mariatrost church there are some good photos that come up.  Yesterday we went to the highest mountain within the city limits of Graz where there is an old castle called Gösting castle.  There is a little cafe in it where we stopped to have a drink.  There isn't even running water and cars cant drive up, so they have to crank up drinks and food.  The view from the top was outstanding and we were even allowed to go everywhere in the castle which was cool.

Venice!!

The weather was great, the food and wine were awesome, and the company was up to par..what more could you ask for?  Venice is such a beautiful city and the gondola ride was unbelievable.  We paid about 80€ for the 3 of us to go on a 30min ride.  The ride is somewhat like a tour.  I went with Ryan and one of his friends that was visiting for spring break.  We had some really great pizza (although I still like Pizza King better).  It was a 6 hour bus ride from Graz to Venice for 30€ roundtrip..not too shabby.  I took about a bajillion pictures in Venice, but I can not load them up using Pascal's netbook.  We decided to go out for St. Patricks Day, however Venice is not a "party city" so we ended up in a bar just the 3 of us and some old dude.  Brussels and Venice are my top 2 favorite cities so far!

Vienna

I went to Vienna with a group of about 20 people and my neighbor Ryan for his birthday.  We got to see alot of cool buildings and ate some good food.  We went to a huge market one day that was absolutely packed.  The smell of all the fresh fruits and veggies and fish was great.  We went to a famous schnitzel place for dinner one night and they served the schnitzel on a sword..pretty awesome!