Day 21-24 - Tour of Austria - Vienna, Salzburg and Innsbruck

We arrived in Vienna around 2pm and dropped our stuff at the hostel before heading straight into town. We spent the afternoon walking around the centre of town and exploring the many churches, palaces and museums of Vienna. Everything in the city is just massive and impressive as this was the seat of the Habsburgs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We then explored down to the river where we found a bar on a fake beach where we reminisced about the amazing beer gardens of Prague. We ended our first night in Vienna by watching a French opera with German subtitles on a massive screen in front of the town hall or Rathaus.

The next day we headed out to Schloss Schonnbrun, the summer palace further out in the suburbs of the city. This palace was ridiculously large with 1400 rooms and huge gardens. We explored all around the gardens with the highlight being the hedge mazes in the back corner where we behaved like small children. After we had had our fill we headed back into the city and saw the things we had missed the previous day, including Mozart's house and museum and the Jewish museum and holocaust memorial. We then grabbed some city bikes and rode out to the Danube where we had an amazing swim and a few beers before riding back to the hostel.

The next day we decided to head to Salzburg even though we couldn't find any accommodation. On the train we decided we would just lock our stuff at the station and sleep in a park somewhere for the night as the weather was so nice. We spent the day doing a self run walking tour we found online which took us past all the sights with the highlight being the fortress and the catacombs in the hill. We also saw a lot more of Mozart's life as well as sights from the sound of music. As the sun began to set we got a box of beers and headed up the elevator to the top of the cliffs overlooking the city. We found some cardboard and a paddock that we could sleep in and then sat looking over the city and the fortress as the sun set which was stunning and our favourite moment of the trip so far. We liked the city of Salzburg much more to our liking than Vienna and even had a great sleep in the park.

The next day we woke up early with the sun and headed straight for the train to Innsbruck. After finding our hostel and eating some lunch by the river we headed straight up to the top of the mountains in the cable car. The mountains were extremely tall and steep and in no time at all we had climbed 1700m to the top. Here we explored for the afternoon, going for a walk along the cliff tops with the mountain sheep and getting a cold beer and drinking it on the summit. Looking out over the Austrian alps we couldn't believe that once more we had managed to find somewhere better than the night before. After catching the last cable car off the mountain we explored the small,quaint and beautiful altstadt (old town) of Innsbruck.

And that brought an end to our Austrian adventure as we head for Switzerland today. However in the four days we were here we explored three cities and experienced some amazing things. Each of the cities were great in their own way and very different, the grand and large city of Vienna, the churches and fortresses of Salzburg in the foothills of the alps and finally Innsbruck which is surrounded by huge the mountains. All in all I think we managed to fit in a lot in a short space of time and now we are looking forward to a few days of chilling out in the Swiss alps.