Vienna, Austria (Last Day)

The most visited site in Vienna is the Schönbrunn Palace.  It has 1,441 rooms  and an enormous garden.  We’re not so interested in looking at the 1,441 rooms (well actually you can only see 29 of them, and no one knows who actually counted them), but the gardens sound interesting.  Because it is the most visited, it is also the most expensive to visit.  Although, it’s not published, they offer a garden only ticket for a much more reasonable price.  I felt like I just won the lottery!  

Lemon/Lime tree

The gardens are immense (google says 435 acres) with massive fountains, all built in the 1770’s.  One is designed to look like the ruins of a Roman temple.  Another has nonsensical hieroglyphics looking writing (hieroglyphics were not translated until 1832).  

Deb used her secret maze trick to skillfully navigate a couple of mazes.  I am unfortunately sworn to secrecy.  Once completed, you can climb up on a platform to watch the struggling masses.

The final attraction of the day was the Gloriette. A gloriette is by definition a “little room” elevated above a garden.  I guess if your summer home has 1,441 rooms, it’s all relative.  The Gloriette requires a pretty steep climb and has fantastic views of the entire city.  The “little room” is now a restaurant that seats a couple of hundred customers.

As predicted, the rain came in the afternoon, which was fine.  We used the time to pack for the rest of our journey.

Gloriette 

From Deb - you can graph similar plants. We tried  to graph a lemon tree with a lime tree in North. But we moved. So this was interesting to see!

Vienna, Austria (First Day Back)

 

St. Stephen Cathedral 

It’s so hard to visit a place like Vienna because there is so much to see and do.  On the other hand there are so many people seeing and doing things.  It’s my day to pick!  It’s a gorgeous day, so I decide to take a nice walk.  My go to is the All Trails app.  Well that narrowed it down to approximately 500 potential walks in Vienna.  I stumble onto the Architectural Trail, a street walk about 4 miles long that coincidentally ends only 250 ft from our VRBO.  The trail starts at Stephanplatz.  As we come out of the subway we are face to face with a massive gothic cathedral, St Stephan’s.  

The walk started with incredible architectural sights including the Vienna Opera House but as it got closer to lunch time, we sorta stopped looking up and started looking around for food.  Deb finally got her Käsekreiner sausage with mustard!

We finished the walk at the VRBO, without doing the last 250 ft.  We have packed 10 days of clothes, we’ve been gone for 7,  there is a laundromat in Migennes, France (hopefully) where we will be in 9 days, with 8 days left on the trip.  Long and short of it is, today is laundry day.  So having done a few loads, I feel driven to do that last 250 ft.

Art Museum 

We end up at an Art Museum dedicated to Freidreich Hundertwasser who was a painter and an architect.  We had seen the building he designed on the first day, which was fascinating.  The museum is in the same style.  He wanted to bring the natural world into building design.  For example, the ground is never completely flat, so floors shouldn’t be either.  He was a tad eccentric, but Deb and I were infatuated.  

Tomorrow is Deb’s turn.

Vienna, Austria (back again)

 

Today we returned to our VRBO from Hallstatt.  Austrian trains are incredibly (certainly by US standards) punctual.  I got an email a few weeks ago warning me that today’s train would be arriving 4 minutes later than expected. “Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience”.  

Our return to Vienna is in three parts: a ferry, a regional train, and a bullet train.  There is exactly 10 minutes between each leg.  Deb is having no part in that.  We take 8:45 ferry instead of the 10:15, we take the 10:04 regional train instead of the 10:32.  So we have time for a walk along the shore before the first train and a pastry in a local bakery before the bullet train.  And Deb can live with that.

I think that it would be nice to just eat in the VRBO but it’s Sunday and the Supermarket is closed.  We stop at our local cafe for a Beer and a Lillet,  pull up the menu for the food stand across the street on Google, translate the unfamiliar words, put on our big boy pants, and order Chicken Kabap Bowls.  Success!  We have take out! 

Tram O

Hallstatt, Upper Austria

This trip is comprised of “travel days” and “do things days.”  For every place we go we travel, do things, repeat!  So today was a “do things” day but unfortunately, it was also a cloudy rainy day.  Our plan was to take the funicular to the top of the mountain and walk the “sky walk,” one of those glass floored platforms that hangs over the edge of a cliff, and then visit the salt mines that are oldest mines in Europe.  My poor modestly acrophobic and claustrophobic wife must have been disappointed that we had to cancel.  She’s a trooper!

Instead we searched for some cough medicine (to no avail).  Then we looked for an umbrella and some Hallstatt centric Christmas presents.  Realizing that our train travel tomorrow would go through lunch, we bought some sandwiches and drinks for the trip.  

Our room 3rd floor, right

On to lunch, a tour of the local museum, drinks dinner and a chat with our eldest son.  Of course, people watching was high on the list, and they didn’t disappoint.  We have been surprised by the number of Asian and Arab tourists that come here.  Deb googled it - there are 780 residents in the town and typically 10,000-30,000 visitors (even on a rainy day)

Tomorrow, back to our little hideaway in Vienna.

Hallstatt, Upper Austria

 Today is our first train ride (many more to come) in Austria.  We are leaving most of our stuff in Vienna, taking just a small backpack to Hallstatt, a picturesque town in the middle of Austria.  

Yesterday, we learned that in World War I, American soldiers brought the “American Flu” to Austria.  Well, it appears that the Austrians are paying it forward.  Deb and I have both caught colds.

The train ride was through rolling hills, until it wasn’t.  The landscape became strikingly rugged in an instant.  The town of Hallstatt was only accessible by ship until the late 1800’s.  You can now drive here, but the train station is on the other side of the lake, so you need to take a small passenger ferry to get to the town.  We stopped for a beer and an aperol spritz.  On the way back to the hotel, we stopped to share some beef goulash.  And yet, there was room for an apple strudel.  

Tomorrow is suppose to be cold and rainy.  Not exactly sure what that mean to our plans.

Vienna, Austria (Day 2)

 I think we are finally adjusted to Austria time.  Today’s challenge is city transportation.  Vienna is suppose to have one of the best.  It turns out that our first challenge is to not get run over by a tram.  Not as easy as it sounds, they are, for the most part, silent.  If you get in front of one, they tinkle a little bell.

Hofburg Palace

After escaping death by tram, getting a breakfast pastry (Deb’s choice - a 3” cold margherita pizza!), we plan our first public transportation trip.  Tickets are purchased on line, and usually not checked.  Of course, travelling without a ticket has severe consequences (apparently so bad that they can’t talk about it).

Deb wants to get a sense for the history of Austria, so we go to the Inner Stadt where all the museums are. There are dozens of them and thousands of tourists.  The history museum starts in 1918 and goes to 2018.  After an hour or so of very detailed exhibits, we are as educated as we are going to get.  Deb is getting flashbacks of her teenage visit to Germany and needs a Bratwurst fix!  We find a würstrelstand, and devour some good German sausages (small faux pax - next with mustard!) 

Drinks and dinner without a hitch.  We are getting to be travel pros.  Tomorrow,  Hallstadt.

Vienna, Austria (Day 1)

 

The timezone change is getting to us, but we are troopers!  After our morning nap, we took a nice stroll around the area.  Everything is very baroque - lavish, over the top.  Even buildings built in the 50’s are in a baroque style.  Then all of a sudden we come upon the Hundertwasser building.  Freidenreich Hundertwasser was apparently not a fan of baroque architecture, or any other architecture for that matter.  He was more a visualist with an environmental slant.

As we walked around, the meal alarm in Deb’s head went off.  We looked at a few al fresco dining spots, but Deb realized that she had not studied up on Austrian dining protocol and was unwilling to make an egregious dining faux pax on her first day.  I was willing to risk it, since every place was apparently filled with the dinner crowd.  Then I realized that my internal clock was way off…it was actually the lunch crowd.  We still had several hours to go for dinner.  So we got two good Austrian pretzels at the grocery store, took them back to the VRBO, and took another nap.

Once Deb had googled Austrian dining protocols, she was good to go, and dinner, as far as we know, was a smashing success.  

Deb made it to 7:30 PM local time before settling in for a good night’s rest.  I made it until at least 7:45!