Greetings from Vienna!
We’re still getting over the jet lag a bit, so the early start this morning caught us slightly off gaurd. Peter was kid enought to dropp us off at the train station and we were on our way to Vienna via Salzburg. For the first leg of our journey, we had an entire compartment/saloon to ourselves, which was really neat. We got to see cool little villages and the alps off in the distance as we rolled silently through frost-covered fields and forests. We then changed over to a very modern Rail Jet the rest of the way to Vienna. For portions of the trip, we were doing over 250 km/hr! JD was specially pleased with the free wi-fi on board. Sure beats driving!
We arrived in Vienna shortly after noon and had to figure out why the ticket machine wouldn’t let us pay with credit card OR cash for our Vienna transit card. We then had to figure out how to locate our hotel address without the use of an iphone and by speaking German in my poor accent to Austrians, who have a different one than what I’m used to hearing. Luckily, we found our hotel before reaching panic mode, dropped our bags and went to lunch. JD had his first ever Doener kebab and approves tremendously. We also hit up the Austrian version of Aldi to get an el-cheapo Austrian SIM card that we spent the rest of the day trying to troubleshoot =/
Tucker met up with us and played tourguide, as we were completely lost in a city that seems much bigger than Munich. We walked through the Naschmarkt, then into the older part of town. The temperatures started to drop, and before we knew it we were all freezng our butts off, but continued to tour around despite the loss of feeling in fingers and toes. Getting to see the attraction lit up so beautifully at night (ahem…4pm when it starts getting dark 😉 was really a treat. The Albertina, the Hofburg, the Opera, the library, Rathaus, the Volksoper, museuems, shopping streets, Christmas markets…everything is just so beautiful for the holidays. I think the real show-stoppers were the Rathaus (think Hogwarts) and the St. Stephens cathedal (unlike anything I’ve ever seen before! – can’t wait to tour the nave tomorrow).
We also got to check out the impressive Vienna Opera house the poor man’s way. For 3 euros a piece, we bougth standing room only tickets to what turned out to be an interpretive ballet performance instead of opera performance. I can’t say which I would have preferred, but the dancers were VERY talented and it would be worth at least three times that amount just to have the chance to look at the inside of the building, let alone enjoy a show there.
We returned home via subway tired and cold. Nothing a hot shower and some good sleep can’t fix!
Tomorrow we plan to visit Schoenbrunn palace (apparently the Hapsburg version of Versailles) and many of the city sites that we just viewd from the outside tonight.
In the meantime, please send some warm weather our way – daytime highs in the 30’s is just a little bit much for us softies…
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