Thursday 4th July
Today is a long day of travel. We spent the day on our trusty old friend, FlixBus, listening to podcasts to pass the time. It is really interesting. I've never been into history, but somehow it is more interesting over here. There is a podcast that I'm listening to called Our Fake History, and the guy tells stories from history and determines whether they are myths or true stories, it's fantastic. Anyway, I've been listening to a series on Vienna and in particular the Habsburg family, which makes now coming to Vienna interesting in a new light.
The bus was meant to be 6 hours long, but we got stuck in traffic and at the border crossing (there's not meant to be borders between Schengen countries though??) so it ended up taking 8 hours, so it turned into a very big day on the bus. Lucky we were well stocked with snacks!
Once we were off the bus we found the train station and hopped on a train then a tram to get to our accommodation. Being peak season, accommodation is incredibly expensive in Vienna so we're staying in a hostel about half an hour North of the city centre by tram.
It's a really cool hostel, it's absolutely massive! There's seven floors! We've got a private room with a set of bunk beds and a little ensuite, which is really cool! (And amazing internet)!
We were exhausted after a long day on the bus (I still don't understand how sitting on a bus is tiring), so we grabbed some dinner from somewhere around the area and then crashed for the night, ready to explore Vienna tomorrow.
Friday 5th July
I slept so well last night!
We headed downstairs to the dining floor and started the day off with a buffet brekkie courtesy of the hostel. I had some yogurt with fruit, and some bread with cheese and some sort of sausage slices on it.
We then headed out in the heat to explore Vienna!
We caught the train out to our first stop, Schönbrunn Palace. It's an amazingly beautiful palace that was once the main summer residence of the Hasburg family, whom I've been learning about on the podcasts! How cool is that?!
I'd been here at Christmas time, so it was really cool to see it now in the peak of summer, and obviously the courtyard wasn't full of Christmas markets, but instead they seemed to be setting up for some sort of show as there was a stage and tons of seating filling up the front of the palace. We walked around the outside of this magnificent palace and around to the palace gardens. Oh my goodness! It is so spectacular and royal! It is beautiful! The gardens stretch on for as far as the eye can see, and the palace situated at one end of the gardens makes it all seem to grand!
We walked through the breath taking gardens and up to the crest of the hill where the Gloriette, a pavilion of arches and columns sits. It is a beautiful structure and quite peaceful up here surrounded by parkland, but perhaps the best feature from up here is the view that it gives of the palace and gardens.
The grass on the hillside looks perfectly manicured, like most palace lawns we've seen do, but it was so funny, because on the way up the hillside we saw a series of automated lawn mowers driving about mowing the lawn! It was such a funny sight!
After we had explored around the Gloriette, we headed back down to the palace and walked around the park and some other gardens. The palace grounds continue on forever! It is all so incredibly beautiful.
We had timed leaving perfectly, as on the way out of the palace grounds, where the stage was set up, they were conducting rehearsals of the show, so we stood around for a while and listened to some German singing!!
From the palace, we jumped back on the train towards Stephansplatz, the main square. We had a wander around the square, taking in all the grand old buildings and then went on the hunt for a bratwurst sausage for lunch.
Well, we didn't have to search for long. We found a little bratwurst stall where we bought the world's biggest hot dogs and ate them in the square!
We'd both been craving a good bratwurst for at least a good month now, and let me tell you, they did not disappoint. Mmmmm, my golly they were good.
After we'd finished our lunch we went into St. Stephens cathedral for a little look around. The outside is so incredible, with the amazing tiled roof, and the shear scale of it! It always surprises us how the inside of the cathedrals never seem as big as the exterior suggests.
We continued to wander around the streets surrounding the square, just exploring and taking in the beautiful buildings.
In our wanderings, we stumbled across St. Peter's Catholic church, so went inside to have a look and they had an organ concert going on! Our timing is fantastic today! We stayed for a little while listening to the music which echoes beautifully in the old church.
We continued walking through the beautiful streets to the Hofburg Palace, an incredibly beautiful 13th century palace that was once the winter residence of the Habsburg rulers, and today is home to the President of Austria. It was so cool to see it this time around with more context and meaning behind it, it definitely made me appreciate it more, and find it more interesting.
After admiring the building and watching horse drawn carriages go through an archway we followed suit and walked through the archway and really got a sense of how huge this palace is. Both this palace and the Schönbrunn palace are so much grander than what the initial front facade suggest.
We continued through to Maria-Theresien-Platz, where there is a garden square, and on either side of the park, facing each other, are beautiful grand buildings, both a mirror images of the other. One is the Natural History Museum, and the other the Fine Arts Museum. It is an absolutely stunning site.
Contrary to the last time I was here when there was snow (!), it was ridiculously hot again today, and it was starting to fatigue us (that and we've walked about 10km over the city!), so we found a little grocery store on a corner down the street, bought a couple of cold drinks, and sat in some shade in the park. It was so peaceful and lovely to just chill and cool down on the grass in amongst such architectural splendour!
A little while later we hopped on a train and made our way to Prater Park, a super old amusement park. It was so cool, it was very old school, kind of what you see in movies or old photos of fun parks from in the past. We walked around for a while soaking up the infectiously exciting atmosphere and found the super old ferris wheel from 1897! It was very cool.
We were exhausted by this stage from our big day and the heat, so headed back to the hostel via a stop along the Danube River to say hi, to keep up with seeing it in all the countries we've crossed paths with it.
What a fantastic day!
Saturday 6th July
We started the morning off with buffet breakfast again and the selection this morning was so good! I had blueberry yogurt with muesli and followed it up with Nutella on bread (naughty I know). Yesterday I had this bread and thought it was strange that it was so sweet and made a comment to Sam that it would have been better with a sweet spread like Nutella rather than savoury cheese and sausage, but hadn't seen any Nutella and wouldn't think a hostel would have it. Well you'll never guess what we found this morning. That's right, Nutella, and not just a sachet of it, but a pump bottle of Nutella!!!! So we grabbed a couple of little glass dishes and pumped the Nutella into it, it was honestly such an exciting start to the day! It's the small things!
After a delicious breakfast, where in my excitement I may have pumped too much Nutella for the bread we had, so we made up a couple of cheeky Nutella sandwiches to take with us, because let's be honest, it would be a crime to waste any Nutella, we packed ourselves up and headed to the bus station for the next part of our adventure. As a bonus, on our way to the train, some people were handing out little cans of ice tea as a promotion! Just what we needed!
Vienna has been wonderful, we had such a great time in this city (and country).
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