Vienna

22nd - 23rd July 2010

We arrived into Vienna just after 1.30, and decided to hit up KFC for some traditional Viennese food before heading to our accommodation. We thought it was on the way, but after I realised that I had misread the map we had to backtrack past the station and back down the other way.

We checked into our massive apartment, run by a kind of creepy old guy, dropped our bags and set off. We headed down to the massive Schöenbrunn Palace, which was about a 30 minute walk from the apartment. The Palace entrance court and building were massive, but we never actually went inside. We headed straight around the back to the equally enormous gardens. I actually think I liked them more than the ones at Versailles. They were quite different to the ones at Versailles, more flowers and it was symmetrical, but it also had heaps of leafy side sections to walk through. We slowly made our way through some of the sections but decided that there was more fun to be had in the "Maze and Labyrinth". We paid the fairly small entrance fee and set off into the big hedge maze. My competitive spirit came out and Dan and I were racing each other to the3 centre. Dan must've cheated because he beat me to the 'Harmony Stones' in the middle. After that maze, we made our way through two labyrinth paths that had heaps of cool stuff in them (Like a fountain that you made squirt by swinging on a box, or springy platforms, or our favourite the 'dance-glockenspiel'.) After we were done in them Dan insisted on playing in the children's playground. He played with the water pumps to make things twirl, the digger, the funny mirrors and he even attempted to climb up into a big bird that you could sit in and make flap. It was designed for small children, so he had a bit of difficulty getting up in there, but he did eventually make it, but was scared stupid the whole time he sat in there!

The next thing we passed in the gardens was the 'Imperial Zoo', which was voted the best zoo in Europe (they even had Koala's!) but they weren't far off closing so we decided not to go in.
We continued on to the massive Neptune fountain, and then up to the Gloriette (We think it was a victory arch) which overlooked the whole palace and gardens as well as the outer suburbs of Vienna. It was pretty cool. We were both getting hungry after our few hours in the park so we decided to head for the apartment and we'd get something along the way.
Walking back down the other side of the park we passed the big public swimming pool, and another impressive fountain that was centered around an imitation Egyptian obelisk. It was designed well before hieroglyphics were decoded, so everything that was on it was completely made up - if we got MoMo to read it, I'm sure he'd tell us that it makes no sense at all!
After passing maybe 3 places which all would have been suitable to eat at (Dan poo pooed each of them) we were back at the apartment and we were starving. We had to walk for another 20 minutes or so until King Daniel found a kebab shop, which met his approval. We grabbed it to go and headed back to the apartment to enjoy our schnitzels, rice and chips. Delicious.

The next morning we got organised and purchased a 24 hour transport ticket. Our first stop was to the St Stevens Cathedral, where we could only enter the first part (But were still able to see the whole thing) as there was a service going on. There was also a heap of flyers up around advertising an upcoming concert featuring the 'world famous' New Zealand Men's Choir.

We left the overly populated square with the cathedral and headed up a block to a much quieter round church, St Peters. I actually liked this one a little more, mainly because it was heaps smaller, and we were almost the only people in it. It's hard to enjoy a church when there's 300 Americans complaining about something, and another 200 Asians standing where you want to take a photo.

We did a bit of looking in souvenir shops, and were tempted to purchase the postcard "No Kangaroos in Austria" but for some reason we didn't, I wish we had've.
We went for more of a stroll through all the beautiful buildings, palaces, concert halls, opera houses and museums in the city centre. It seemed as though we'd walked for hours and we were still in amongst some of the most spectacular buildings I've ever seen.

It was getting well past lunchtime when we decided that we were starving we so decided to make use of our transport cards and give my little legs a rest. We headed out to a stop our creepy accommodation guy had pointed out saying that it was on the river that there was lots of restaurants on the water. The train station was on the middle of a bridge halfway across the Danube River. We looked on both banks of the river, and there was hardly a restaurant to be found; Some sleazy take away places and some carnival type bars. People were swimming in the river, and some of the braver ones were jumping off the train bridge - it would've been well higher than the tower in Zurich - almost 20m I reckon. We were too hungry to hang around and watch, so we walked through the carnival type thing set up on the side of the river, before giving up on his s*** advice and heading back into the city centre.

We ended up finding a little Viennese Kitchen café. We both had a schnitzel, but Dan had soup and Strudel with his. The strudel was disappointing, very dry. We continued walking through the amazing town centre, checking out more theatres, laughing at the hundreds of ticket sellers all dressed up as Mozart, some much better attired than others. I was starting to feel really ill, but Dan insisted on dragging me miles out of town so he could go to a cemetery, which was where Mozart was buried. He also claimed that Strauss and Beethoven were buried there too, but I'd read that they weren't and that there was just some small memorials there too them. Feeling progressively worse on the 30 minute tram ride, Dan pulled me off the tram a stop too early and then made me walk through the s***ty overgrown cemetery. I ended up cracking the s***s with him and sitting by the entrance while he went and looked at what he wanted to see.

It was a very quiet journey back to the apartment. We called into a supermarket, which was still open, grabbed a ready-made lasagna and ate, before I, still feeling very sick, went straight to bed.

The next morning we were up early and packed, gave the creep his keys back and headed for the train station for our next stop, Linz.