Music running through Vienna's veins

Having a positively joyful time here in Vienna (that's a reference to Beethoven's 9th Symphony for those that didn't immediately realise).

Dad has been acting as tour guide. Today we went to the Secession Building (below), with the giant golden cauliflower on the roof. Inside is the Beethoven frieze by Klimt, which is inspired by Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Then we took a look at some apartments designed by Otto Wagner, before heading to the Belvedere to take a look at some more Klimt works, including 'the Kiss'.

Following a good hearty Austrian lunch, we looked at a couple more Wagner buildings, which have lovely art nouveau style.

Yesterday wasn't quite such a resounding success. While Dad went to his conference, Tom and I set out for a morning of Lomo worship, as the Lomography Society International's headquarters are in Vienna. A bit of a distance away, we managed to find them in the rain, but were very disappointed when it turned out to just be an uninviting office block, rather than the galleries that we expected. After hovering around outside in the rain for 10 minutes, we did manage to catch the eye of someone who let us in, and we had a bit of a sticky-beak around the office, which looked a very cool place to work, but an office nonetheless.

We then decided to pay a visit to the Lomo shop, which proved more difficult than it might sound. Lets just say that my map-reading skills were not at their best. But this was nothing compared to the shop, which was scruffy and had silly novelty items, like voodoo dolls, with very little space devoted to the cameras. Regrouping over lunch, we had a nice afternoon perusing the Leopold Museum.

I think though that Tuesday night has to be my pick of Vienna so far - we went to see Rigoletto at the Vienna Staatsoper, and all things about it were just incredible - singing, sets, costumes, acting etc. What made it so nice as well was that the Vienna opera-going crowd around us were loving every second of it. The lady next to us Brrraavo'ed with such vigour. They certainly love their music in Vienna - on Monday night we went to the Musikverein to see a couple of Beethoven symphonies, and it was a similar story.