Graz
I guess my rapier + laptop icon is as about as appropriate as anything for Graz because it's a city where the interesting bits vary from Baroque to modernist, with all points in-between.
Oldest highlight is the Gothic 'staircase of reconciliation', a double spiral staircase that meets on each floor.
Not the easiest thing to photograph well; there's a clearer video of it here.
Above Graz is the Schloßberg, a hilltop that's been more or less fortified at various times, and is currently a large public park, which includes the clock tower for the city, built in the 1700s.
Unlike most clock towers, if you're up on the Schloßberg, you can stand close to the clock face, which is a weird experience as public clocks are usually high above you.
To get down to the city proper you could walk, or take the funicular, or, as we did, take the lift. That sounds like it would be the most boring option, a lift down through the hill, but this is no ordinary lift, it's a glass lift, in a shaft with purple lighting and visible machinery
It stops in a cavern with industrial lamps, stairways and flooring, weird blue lighting, an inexplicable railway track and strange and slightly spooky fairy tale illustrations. It would be a brilliant setting for a darkwave / EBM rave . . .
The second place that had me thinking, I should be wearing Cyberdog gear was the Murisel, the artificial island moored on the Mur.
Inside the geodesic dome type shell, there's a cafe - cocktail bar, where you're sat just above water level, and a (very small) amphitheatre: another space asking for a soundtrack . . . .
Oldest highlight is the Gothic 'staircase of reconciliation', a double spiral staircase that meets on each floor.
Not the easiest thing to photograph well; there's a clearer video of it here.
Above Graz is the Schloßberg, a hilltop that's been more or less fortified at various times, and is currently a large public park, which includes the clock tower for the city, built in the 1700s.
Unlike most clock towers, if you're up on the Schloßberg, you can stand close to the clock face, which is a weird experience as public clocks are usually high above you.
To get down to the city proper you could walk, or take the funicular, or, as we did, take the lift. That sounds like it would be the most boring option, a lift down through the hill, but this is no ordinary lift, it's a glass lift, in a shaft with purple lighting and visible machinery
It stops in a cavern with industrial lamps, stairways and flooring, weird blue lighting, an inexplicable railway track and strange and slightly spooky fairy tale illustrations. It would be a brilliant setting for a darkwave / EBM rave . . .
The second place that had me thinking, I should be wearing Cyberdog gear was the Murisel, the artificial island moored on the Mur.
Inside the geodesic dome type shell, there's a cafe - cocktail bar, where you're sat just above water level, and a (very small) amphitheatre: another space asking for a soundtrack . . . .