17-18 August 2013
Day 8: Getting there
We had a free breakfast at the pension, which is always a nice thing, and then we jumped on a private bus to head off on our 3 hour trip to Vienna. I managed to watch The Avengers during the trip although I had to keep moving my tablet because when the sunlight found the fingerprint magnet of a screen, there wasn't much movie left to see.
Orientation
After we dumped our stuff at the hostel, we headed off to enjoy the sunny day with a look around town starting at St Stephen's church that was both huge and impressive (*waits for a "that's what she said"*) but had a lot of black on it from flame damage. We walked around the city to see the famous statues and buildings before splitting up to do our own thing. I was feeling pretty worn out from the previous week of non-stop doing things and hey, I am on holiday after all, so I went back to the hostel to upload some photos to the blog and relax.
Football game
Our English tour leader was naturally a football fan so it's no surprise that he invited us to see a football match for Austria Wien vs Wiener Neustadt. We stopped at a street food stall on the way to get dinner and I went for a super spicy noodle box and a beer. After we managed to get tickets and I checked my sunscreen into security (I guess they thought it had vodka in it) we made it to some seats right down the front just after the game started. The home team had a great turn out (at least 3/4 of the stadium) and the atmosphere was really good. It's the first football (*quietly whispers* or soccer) match that I've been to but I really enjoyed it and as a bonus, the home team smashed the away team 5 - 0. I didn't see any riots but we did see the away team leaving on their bus with a full police escort that didn't stop for any red lights.
Cards
We ended the night with a few more beers and playing cards; 31 and gin rummy. That's the game 31, not 31 beers by the way.
Day 9: Exploring
After a lazy start I headed out for breakfast/lunch; a doner box with rice that sounds strange but tasted really good and the bunch of wasps that were trying to steal it will agree. Sunday in Europe is so different to Australia because almost everything shuts down but thankfully that didn't affect me because the trains and palaces were still open.
Schoenbrunn Palace
Vienna has a few palaces and I'd already seen one on the orientation walk yesterday so the second one on the list was the Schoenbrunn Palace. It's in amazingly good condition and although the gardens at the back of it aren't quite as impressive as the Versailles Palace in France, they're still quite good. I wandered around the outside of the palace and through the gardens up to a monument at the back of the gardens, where I sat to people watch and spend some time with a map to figure out where the next palace was. After getting my bearings I headed back through the gardens to find some of the hidden statues and along the way I stumbled across some squirrels who were quite friendly but a bit too erratic to get a good photo of.
Belvedere Palace
The next palace took a few trains and some walking to get to but the weather was so nice that it was worth it. This palace was also in great condition except for the common green corrosion of the copper/brass roofs. The gardens of this palace weren't on the same scale as the last but I did meet a Swiss girl who was happy to chat as we wandered around and she even helped me take a mischievous photo of a statue.
Bungy
The Swiss chick told me about a place on a river island called Donauinsel Tower where they do a bungy jump and although I wasn't planning on doing a jump (it's still on the list though) I wanted to see someone jump. After a few trains I ended up on the wrong island but I could still see the tower and I did see a jump, yay!
Dinner
When you're in the home of wiener (or Vienna) schnitzels, what else would you have for dinner? Exactly, so we went to Wienerwald for beer and schnitzels. They were good but as I'm sure I've already said on this blog, they're so bland compared with what we get in Australia; I miss the parmigiana topping.
Day 8: Getting there
We had a free breakfast at the pension, which is always a nice thing, and then we jumped on a private bus to head off on our 3 hour trip to Vienna. I managed to watch The Avengers during the trip although I had to keep moving my tablet because when the sunlight found the fingerprint magnet of a screen, there wasn't much movie left to see.
Orientation
After we dumped our stuff at the hostel, we headed off to enjoy the sunny day with a look around town starting at St Stephen's church that was both huge and impressive (*waits for a "that's what she said"*) but had a lot of black on it from flame damage. We walked around the city to see the famous statues and buildings before splitting up to do our own thing. I was feeling pretty worn out from the previous week of non-stop doing things and hey, I am on holiday after all, so I went back to the hostel to upload some photos to the blog and relax.
Football game
Our English tour leader was naturally a football fan so it's no surprise that he invited us to see a football match for Austria Wien vs Wiener Neustadt. We stopped at a street food stall on the way to get dinner and I went for a super spicy noodle box and a beer. After we managed to get tickets and I checked my sunscreen into security (I guess they thought it had vodka in it) we made it to some seats right down the front just after the game started. The home team had a great turn out (at least 3/4 of the stadium) and the atmosphere was really good. It's the first football (*quietly whispers* or soccer) match that I've been to but I really enjoyed it and as a bonus, the home team smashed the away team 5 - 0. I didn't see any riots but we did see the away team leaving on their bus with a full police escort that didn't stop for any red lights.
Cards
We ended the night with a few more beers and playing cards; 31 and gin rummy. That's the game 31, not 31 beers by the way.
Day 9: Exploring
After a lazy start I headed out for breakfast/lunch; a doner box with rice that sounds strange but tasted really good and the bunch of wasps that were trying to steal it will agree. Sunday in Europe is so different to Australia because almost everything shuts down but thankfully that didn't affect me because the trains and palaces were still open.
Schoenbrunn Palace
Vienna has a few palaces and I'd already seen one on the orientation walk yesterday so the second one on the list was the Schoenbrunn Palace. It's in amazingly good condition and although the gardens at the back of it aren't quite as impressive as the Versailles Palace in France, they're still quite good. I wandered around the outside of the palace and through the gardens up to a monument at the back of the gardens, where I sat to people watch and spend some time with a map to figure out where the next palace was. After getting my bearings I headed back through the gardens to find some of the hidden statues and along the way I stumbled across some squirrels who were quite friendly but a bit too erratic to get a good photo of.
Belvedere Palace
The next palace took a few trains and some walking to get to but the weather was so nice that it was worth it. This palace was also in great condition except for the common green corrosion of the copper/brass roofs. The gardens of this palace weren't on the same scale as the last but I did meet a Swiss girl who was happy to chat as we wandered around and she even helped me take a mischievous photo of a statue.
Bungy
The Swiss chick told me about a place on a river island called Donauinsel Tower where they do a bungy jump and although I wasn't planning on doing a jump (it's still on the list though) I wanted to see someone jump. After a few trains I ended up on the wrong island but I could still see the tower and I did see a jump, yay!
Dinner
When you're in the home of wiener (or Vienna) schnitzels, what else would you have for dinner? Exactly, so we went to Wienerwald for beer and schnitzels. They were good but as I'm sure I've already said on this blog, they're so bland compared with what we get in Australia; I miss the parmigiana topping.
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| A statue of a guy controlling a horse with invisible reins but it looks like he's punching it |
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| A monument to the plague |
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| Schoenbrunn Palace from the gardens |
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| The Belvedere Palace |
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| Grabbing some statue boobs at the Belvedere Palace |
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| Some cool street art in the subway |
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| A fancy looking church with very ornate pillars |
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| I made a friend in the gardens of Schoenbrunn Palace |
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| Looking out over the Schoenbrunn Palace gardens from the terrace |
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| A panorama of Schoenbrunn Palace from the gardens |
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| Action shot of the football match we saw |
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