She says:

Well, we're back to whirlwind touring as our trip very quickly winds down. We will be home in less than 48 hours and we still have three flights and two cities on two different continents to explore.

We arrived to Vienna last night after our worst flight yet. Suffice it to say, we will be avoiding Austrian Airlines in the future if possible. Also, the weather in Vienna was bad and we found ourselves in a turbulent holding pattern over the city for at least a half hour.

Looking at maps, we thought it would be relatively easy (remember Japan?) to navigate our way to our hotel and around town via public transportation. We bought a 24 hour pass and set off on a train towards a subway towards our hotel.

As I read our destination aloud, a girl sitting next to us giggled at my German. She ended up being a huge help, giving us insider tips and even staying on the train past her stop to help us get to our transfer. In order to thank Maren (that was her name), Matt reached into his "fez dispenser", the stack of fezes (ha ha, iPhone just autocorrected that to "feces", a much funnier stack for Matt to be carrying around!) he's been carrying around, and pulled out the ridiculous self portraits I'd taken in the free photo booth at the Vienna airport. We hopped off the subway, waving to our new friend who now has four gorgeous glamour shots (more autocorrect hilarity, that just corrected to "glamour sh*ts!) of yours truly to cherish forever.

Getting out of the station, we finally pulled on our raincoats for the first time all month. Well worth the packing space.

Despite darkness and rain, Matt was especially entranced by the old buildings, cobblestone streets and charm if Vienna and is ready to start a month long Euro trip!

We had a quick dinner of yummy pasta at an Italian restaurant in Austria owned by an Indian guy. We got mis-directions to our nearby hotel from several people, got thoroughly lost, began imagining ourselves in the gorror movie "Hostel", and finally stumbled upon our home for the night. In the daytime, we realized that the subway station we had emerged from the night before had been only about a block and a half from our hotel.

Due to the bad weather, we gave ourselves a chance to get a good night's rest with plans to head out for a ho-ho tour (or two or three, depending on time) in the morning.

I couldn't sleep very well, so took advantage of the soaker tub, then climbed back into bed for a few more zzzs. I awoke to an unexpectedly beautiful, sunny day and Matt's horrified face at the rash that had broken out all over my body in the night.

We aren't certain, but as the rash spread and really came into it's own over the course of the day, we've decided that, due to the locations of the breakout, the rash is a result if my lovely early morning soak. I'm really hoping it's a skin infection from a previous guest. That whole relaxation thing kinda backfired on me, as my back is now on fire from the itchy rash.

Luckily, our hotel, though infectious, was located right in Ringstrasser and gave us easy access to the beautiful sights and sites of Vienna. The hop on hop off tour bus loading zone is mere blocks from our hotel. Due to more mis-directions by well meaning strangers including a happy Slovakian architect, it took us almost an hour to find out starting point. We are definitely getting used to needing flexibility in our plans.

We grabbed a super rich (both in chocately flavor and price) lilliput sized sacher torte from the legendary Hotel Sacher. We felt pretty meh about it, but were glad to have tried it. Even with our matching huge bellies and sweet teeth, we were unable to finish the tiny cake.

The ho-ho tour took us to most of the key sites in Vienna and we took some time to walk along the Danube Canal and look at awesome graffiti and explore Schonnbrunn Palace and Zoo.

The zoo claims to be one of the world's oldest and is certainly the most charming one we've visited. After petting Asian elephants, tigers and leopards, and playing with macaques the ones in their enclosures didn't impress us all that much. We are oh so worldly. We did, however, squeal with joy at the sight of the one month old baby giraffe and the one year old baby African elephant (bigger ears and bodies and less pinkness than their Asian cousins).

There is a baby panda too, but the pandas were really sleepy in the hot sun and we couldn't tell who was who.

The Schonnbrunn palace and grounds are gorgeous, and we didn't have near enough time to explore, but we vowed to return to Vienna one day to spend much more time in and around the city.

We made our way back to the hotel and the on subway and train to the airport. After less than 20 hours in Vienna, we are back up in the sky.

We arrive to Brussels tonight and have about twelve hours before we head to New York, which after visiting several times and being that it's English speaking, will probably feel like home. Hard to believe, but in about 36 hours, we truly will be home and all that will be left is for me to sort through 6 memory cards of photos on three cameras and add a notebook full of memories to Matt's blog entries. What an incredible month it's been!

If you've been reading along, we'd love to know and then we'll save the really good stories we didn't include for you! Let us know in the comments section below. Also, I did hours and hours of research on each of our locations, most of which we ran out of time to use, so if you want any tips, let us know that as well!

-Shauna