Move over Amsterdam, Viennas number 1 now!!
Trip Start
Jul 04, 2010
1
12
33
Trip End
Oct 29, 2010
Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
We started our first evening in Vienna by buying a 'fork and walk tour' through Busabout, so ended up doing this with most of our bus which was a lot of fun. It was basically a tour through the city and dinner afterwards of Schnitzel, Schnapps and Strudell! Sounds good to us.
We started the tour in the Museum quarter flanked by these grandeous musuems all of which were related back to the famous Austrian family the Hofburgs, the mother Maria ruled the land and had something like 16 children, one of whom was Maria Anntoinette. We then went past one of the Hofburg palaces which was spectacular, in Austria its the thing to do to have dance lessons (simon couldn't quite get his head around that) to learn the Viennese Waltz, and each year they host huge balls in this palace, which would just be amazing! While we are standing there a classical string quartet that I can only assume were busking starting playing Vivaldi's four seasonss - it was magical to hear, talk about perfect timing!
We also saw the church that one of the four Vienna Boys choirs sings at each Sunday (apparently they used to castrate members of the choir in the olden days so they could continue singing!), and the hidden church where several Hofburg's got married and the other church that hosts some of their bones or organs I forgot which is which anyway their body parts are separated accross churches in Vienna, a tad weird! Off to another church, St Stephens Cathedral which was very gothic looking but most of which was under construction (we're starting to get used to seeing this around Europe!) We take a short break and I take a detour to a chocolate shop where I bought the most amazing bar of chocolate mousse chocolate! good for the health of course! One of the highlights on the way home was the Parliament building which looked like something from Greece not Vienna, amazing colums, sweeping driveways and a huge stone and gold statue of the greek goddess of wisdom Athenia, our Austrian tour guide thought it was quite funny the statue was inside when really the 'wisdom' should be inside!
We all end up at this tiny Austrian restaurant for our dinner, which was delicious the strudel def a favourite.
Day two we take a wine tour/bike ride out in the Austrian countryside to Wachau Valley famous for its wines of course. Our first vineyard we try 3 white wines, all nice, the tradiontal Austrian wine was my favourite. Time to get on the bikes, we take a ride through several little towns and stop at a restaurant/someones house on the top of a hill for a huge Austrian BBQ of pork pork and more pork, including sausages stuffed with cheese wrapped in bacon! A favourite with the boys all washed down with 3 more different wines. We then stop at one of the little towns for chocolate and schnapps tasting all very tempting and delicious! The train ride home was roudy to say the least when our tour guide opened several bottles of wine for us to drink on the way home. No more needs to be said!
That evening we head to a local tourist pub called the Travel Shack, where we all had meat pies (Jesters pies) that the owner imports from London! They were pretty good too. There was some interesting shots done by people during the evening (no not me) including a fire shot (which simon did!) where they literally light the alcohol in your mouth on fire! crazy! Simon got to write his name on the wall of the pub after getting his face painted by the barstaff, having to keep it like that for the rest of the night (or else they painted over it the next day!). A good night had by all!
Our last day we visit the most spectacular palace, buckingham palace has nothing on this! Schonnbrum palace, again one of the Hofburgs. The layout was basically huge palace, gardens, more gardens either side for km's, huge fountain, massive hill and on top of the hill another smaller palace, the views from the top after our hike up were amazing overlooking all of Vienna.
We would highly recommend anyone travelling this way to stop here, we will definately be coming back!
