Different kind of beautiful Chapter 9: A stroll in the Belvedere Garden

Travelogue: 9th June 2015

To get around Vienna, you can hop onto trams. It is easy and convenient. At the tram stops, you can view the places that the tram will stop by.

We are here! A statue of Sphinx welcomed us.

We arrived at around 6 pm and the palace was already closed to visitors so we went to the gardens, which would remain open till night.

The Belvedere is a historic building complex in Vienna, Austria consisting of two Baroque palaces (the Upper and Lower Belvedere), the Orangery, and the Palace Stables.

And that is Bon hugging the wind.

The garden is decorated with numerous statues as well as fountains and cascades. The view from the top of the sloping garden towards the Unteres Belvedere is magnificent and explains its name – Belvedere – which is Italian for beautiful view.

The garden has three levels, separated by two large cascades. The upper cascade consists of six basins flanked by statues. Even more statues adorn the lower cascade, a small waterfall. SphinxLarge statues of sphinxes – symbols of strength and intelligence – decorate the upper levels of the garden. Source here. 

As we walked in to the garden, a huge mirror in the middle of the garden caught our eyes.

We saw the other tourists trying their best to take their photo from the best angle of the mirror. The trick was not to block the palace behind us.

Oh, we failed. Lol. We focused too much on ourselves and did not realized that we blocked the palace.

Since it was pretty cloudy and windy, the stroll in the royal gardens was lovely. Every part, side and corner of the garden was an invitation to take photos. We were snapping away photos of ourselves in various parts of the garden.

Bon wanted us to play hide and seek in this huge garden but we did not want to embarrass ourselves even though that is what we seem to do most of the time.

View of the palace from lower Belvedere.

I love how the place was not crowded at all. Perhaps there were more people in the day when the palace was opened.

There were also people jogging around the garden. Wow. I would come here and jog everyday too if I stay anywhere nearby.

The decorative tiered fountains were in the focal point of the entire garden.

The wide space in front of the tiered fountain.

We bumped into some sisters in hijab too and found out that they are tourists from Sweden.

Apparently the fountain has some magical powers to make the bestie float in the air.

Tried out different angles to take wefie and the wind is not our friend. Please excuse our weird facial expressions.

The sisters from Sweden finally helped us to take a decent photo by the fountain.

Statues along the staircase between the lower and middle part of the garden symbolize the twelve months of the year.

Do we look similar?

On our way back to our apartment, we decided to stop by here,  Schwarzenbergplatz.

One prominent feature of the square is the Hochstrahlbrunnen, a large fountain that looks like a geyser with pseudo-natural rocks in a circular pool. It was built to celebrate the construction of the first water pipeline from the Styrian alps to Vienna in 1873. In the decades before, the water supplies from various springs in the Vienna Woods and through the Wien River had proved to be insufficient for the ever-increasing population of Vienna. Source here.

If you have the chance to be here, do come at night where you will see the fountain in bright, colourful lights.

We wanted to wait but we were starving so we went off to look for dinner before heading back to rest for the next day.