Vienna

Day I
We left Krakow, Poland before 7am on May 28th making our way to Vienna, Austria on the next leg of our adventure. Luckily, we were able to get on a direct train, so we did not have to bother with making connections and risking missing our next train. Because we left Poland so early, we arrived in Vienna in the early afternoon (our train from Poland was about 8 hours long, but given that it was passing through 3 different countries, this can be forgiven). Since our experience in the Krakow - Tutti Frutti (have a laugh now, its quite a funny name) Hostel sharing a room with 8 other people, some snorers, and knowing that we prefer to rise earlier in the morning so that we can visit the attractions of the city before they close, we decided not to stay in a dorm hostel again. Instead, thanks to the marvelous expedia.ca we were able to find a fairly inexpensive hotel (about 110$ CAN a night as opposed to paying 40$ CAN each a night in a hostel) which conveniently included a great buffet breakfast everymorning. We decided that paying a little bit extra to get a better night sleep, have our own bathroom, and to get the included breakfast everymorning was worth the extra 15$ each a night.

Once we had dropped off our things and checked into our hotel (our room even had a kitchen!) we decided to spend the evening wandering around the city centre so we took the tram from the station right across the street from our hotel and got off at VIenna's Opera House. One of the only downsides to our visit to Vienna, was that much of the city centre was currently being refurbished, some of the streets in the central shopping and tourist areas were being redone, and many of the churches and older buildings were being restored and so were hidden behind scafolding. We snapped some photos of the Opera, visited the tourist information to get a map and a listing of the city's attractions, and then just strolled through the shops. At one point we passed a massive cathedral located right in the downtown of Vienna called the Cathedral of St. Stephan. Sadly this was one of the buildings which was covered by scafolding on the whole front side, but since it was one of the major sights mentioned on a walking tour map we had picked up we decided to visit the inside of the church. It is a Gothic Cathedral which was built in the 12th century, its roof was destroyed during the Second World War but is considered the primary landmark of the city. It is, like many of the other churches we have seen, impossible to describe in words, comparable to nothing I have seen before. After seeing the cathedral and visiting a few souvenir shops, we ate dinner and returned to the hotel for the night.

Day II
We enjoyed a great, massive breakfast early on our second morning, and then took the tram back to the city centre to begin our first full day of sightseeing in the Austrian Capital. Following a map which we had picked up that outlined a route that would show us the majority of the attractions, we passed by the St. Stephan Cathedral again before making our way to the Hofburg Palace (on the way we passed but did not visit the house of Mozart in the Hofburg Palace we saw a room in which at age 6 he played for the royal family). Consisting of around 2600 rooms, this palace was the home of the Emperor of Austria who was also, during a considerable portion of the Hapsburg line, also the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Inside the palace we visited an exhibit of the staterooms, a section on the history of one of the last Empresses (Elizabeth, or Sisi, who is very popular but who led a rather tragic life), and the palace's collections of Silver, Porcelain and the Treasury. Again, the Hapsburgs were a very lavish royal family (although not quite as lavish as the Russians of course) having collections of dinnerware for every occassion which took up several rooms, gold detailing on much of the mouldings in their staterooms, and of course collecting all manner of gold, jewlery, icons, silks, etc.

Unfortunately appart from the first half day, and the afternoon of our third day, the weather while we were in Vienna was quite rainy and cool so after seeing the palace, and the exterior of it and the famous museums just across the road, we decided to visit the Butterfly House behind the Palace. Since it is located in a greenhouse, it was very nice and warm, and it was certainly more cheerful inside with the butterflies, plants and flowers, than it was outside fighting with our umbrella and dodging puddles. After the Butterfly House we took a detour off of our walking tour and found a cafe where we had Viennnese Schniztel for lunch, then we continued on our way to see first the Parliament building and then the Rathaus (City Hall). By this time the weather was getting quite cool and rainy so we grabbed a tram back towards our hotel, stopping to get some groceries in order to make dinner and some sandwiches for the next day.

Day III
After again enjoying a great breakfast buffet, and grabbing the umbrella which I had purchased the day before, Ross and I headed out for a somewhat soggy sightseeing morning. Having seen many of the cities major landmarks the day before, we took the tram past the Opera, the Parliament and the Rathaus until we reached the Votive Church. This building too was sadly undergoing reconstruction, and it was raining quite heavily so we didn't get any photos of its exterior but instead bought a few postcards so that we can show what it was like. This is one of the newer, historic cathedrals of the city, having being built in 1879. It was dedicated to the Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elizabeth for their 25th wedding anniversary. After the church, and seeing as it was still raining, we decided to abandon the rest of our walking tour route that we had not finished the day before and opted to take the metro out of the city centre to the Schonbrunn Palace. This palace was first used as a hunting palace for the royal family as it was then located in a thickly forested area. It also includes a famous zoo which like the palace was built in the mid 1500's. The palace was renovated and finally completed in 1700 and is an absolutely stunning baroque building (it rivals some of the palaces in Russia). The palace is made up of 1441 rooms including 139 kitchens (!). By the end of our tour of the interior of the palace, the weather finally turned cooperative, the clouds had been blown away and it was warm and sunny again so we decided to spend a few hours walking through the palace gardens.The park, our guide book tells me covers 197 acres, and is strewn with fountains, hedges and roses (which were blooming when we visited) and also has a zoo, a hedge maze and Roman ruins. An entire day could probably be spent in the park itself, but we took in only a small part of it before returning to our hotel where we cooked dinner and then packed our backpacks since we had to catch our train to Berlin the following morning.

Sadly, the poor weather made our visit to Vienna less than ideal, and I am sure the city would have been higher on my favorites list had the sun cooperated with us, but we have otherwise been lucky with the weather so I can't complain too much. Vienna is a very pretty city, and learning about the history of the Hapsburgs was very interesting too!

Still to come: Berlin and Paris!