Captains log 27/06/13 Vienna! After a great night being a kid and hand washing my cloths in a bath tub, I had an ok sleep. Although this is the first hotel that I could stream lol on my phone i fell asleep so quickly, so disappointing :(! We got up and had breakfast, sadly even though this is likely the nicest hotel we have stayed in, it was really bad. I tried the scramble eggs, they were like powder, and the sausage were average to say the least. Oh well, with food in our belly's we set out for a coach tour of the city. I really like Vienna, and I do plan on coming back here. It has a strange sense of money about it, I'm not sure why. It's sad that 80% of the city had to be rebuilt after WW2. Liz walked us around the palace and we saw the balcony were Hitler gave his first speech after taking over Austria in 1938. We then went to the monument against war and fascism. It's two giant rock cravings from stone pillars out of mathausing concentration camp, and there's all sort of things sculpted into it. An old school soldier with a WW1 gas mask on, planes, bombs and anything to do with war. There's also a steel statue, that depicts a Jewish man having to clean of graffiti of anti naziism with a toothbrush, very moving. After that we went into the main mall, to go to the swazsiki shop, Austria is the home of it. On the way there we walked past our first Aussie bar, sad to say they didn't have any decent beers on tap and didn't have the eagles on the tube, so we didn't go back. The swazsiki shop is amazing, some of the crystals in that place were amazing, completely breath taking! After a small introduction and a little information about what and how they have came about, it was shopping time. We walked around the shop amazed at all the crystals and then went a little silly. We got nanny a lovely crystal clam with a pearl in, Bella a very nice necklace and Zoe a birthday present. It was a good shop. Feeling a slight bit of buyer regret we settled in for some Austrian coffee. We're told that after the otter men empire was fraught out of Austria in the 1200s they left some amazing coffee, so since then Austrians have always had great coffee. After that we walked around the city center looking though shops, until we found a small little shop for lunch. This place was loose, no English in a little side street, we new we were in for a good meal. We both had goulash, which was a hearty meal of potato wedges, hunks of beef, a spicey sausage and whole parpekia. This came in a old iron saucepan with 4 different types of hand made breads, including a giant pretzel. It was amazing and one of the best meals we have had so far. A quick walk back to the bus and we were heading off to the schnapps museum. This was cool, we had one of the owners give us a tour. A down to earth funny guy who made it quick and enjoyable, clearly he has done many tours for contiki and knows that no one cares about making it they just want the free shots. I tried 3 different types of schnapps, "rocket fuel" which was peach schnapps infused with chillies, "imperial gold" which was a apricot schnapps with real 23 caret gold particles in it, and absinthe. They were really nice, but extremely strong. Bella had a hazelnut milky one, which she really enjoyed. We brought a few more bottles to add to our ever building alcohol collection and off we went. A quick photo stop at the Austrian summer palace and we were heading back to the hotel for our Mozart concert and dinner. This was a very cool extra we did and it made me feel very cultured. There was a 12 piece orchestra that played all night, they were accompanied by 2 Oprah singers. One guy, one girl. The girl was amazing and her voice was very powerful, the guy was sometimes drown out by the music. Then there was two dancers, and they performed many small dances to the music. It was very very enjoyable. It was over all to soon when we headed off to the rat house for dinner, a vegetable broth to start with, a chicken schnitzel, and an apple strudel, very very Austrian. It was ok but nothing to write home about. we get back on the bus and head home to deal with our still wet cloths from our washing the night before. I'm slowing beginning to hate my suitcase!! Night guys! Munich tomorrow.