AUSTRIA....First Stop: Vienna

We found these little Santa's in a shop window in Vienna (but the shop was closed so we couldn'tbuy them).

After Christmas we boarded a plane to Vienna with the plan to spend a few days here then jump on a train and travel through the amazing Austrian & Swiss alps on the way to Salzburg and then Zurich. We were also in search of a bit of snow which, sadly, didn't happen in Vienna. The temperature here ranged from -2 to +3, and was the warmest for the trip.

Vienna is a city of history with every street containing a museum and or ornate church. It is also the home of Mozart and Strauss, and as such there are people trying to sell concert tickets at every popular spot.

For our first day we headed out with no real plans other then to see what we came across. We took the 'hop-on-hop-off' bus and picked out a few places to return to. We don't usually do these buses as the commentary is usually pre-recorded and the traffic annoying but it was free as part of the hotel deal.

We decided to head into St Stephen's Cathedral first which is right in the city centre, but there was a mass in process so we decided to return later.

We thought we'd eat like the locals and went for a 'credit crunch' lunch of Hot Dogs. Not understanding a lot of german made it a little difficult with regards to the sausage options on the menu, so we just pointed to 'the red ones' on the grill. They had cheese through them. Steve thought they were good, Claire didn't. Still don't know what they are called.

It was about this time we started to notice a couple of things, the souvenior shops had Tshirts with 'No kangaroos in Austria' and there were people selling pigs (souveniers, not the real ones) of all shapes, sizes and colours. We did ask a couple of people but no one seemed to be able to answer the pig question. We did find 2 australian bars though..... who would have thought. One of them had a Calton AFL jersey hanging on the walls and advertised a Sunday BBQ.

After lunch we headed off on a walk around town to see the places we had picked out on the bus. First stop was the Hofburg Palace. While we were there, Steve was doing his thing and taking photos when he uttered the words "The lens doesn't feel right", next minute there was a crack and when we took the lens off there is a sizable 'bit' rattling around inside. A change of lens and some creative angles later we still have photos.

One thing to remember while walking around is the roads are very wide as they carry cars, trams and cycle lanes. We had a couple of near misses with trams as they tend to go in opposite direction to the cars, and are relatively quiet.

This clock has a local important figure from history move across the face each hour and at midday/midnight all 12 parade across

Votive church
Strauss monument in Stadtpark
When we made it to Stadtpark we succombed to the concert scouts and bought tickets to the Strauss/Mozart concert being held in the Kurzalon that evening. We chose this building over the others as it looked pretty from the outside and was one of the locations where Strauss played with his brother. We briefly considered doing the dinner and show until we saw the menu...

Clear beef tea anyone?
Since it was getting toward darkness and very cold we headed into the Leopold Museum for an exhibition of artwork. Very interesting to say the least. Finally we made it back to St Stephens and it was worth the wait. The interior is spectacular.
The concert was well worth the walk across town in the cold. It was not as formal as we had imagined and we did recognise all the music played. It was split into 2 halves of around 8 songs each. 2 songs had an opera accompaniament and another 2 had a ballet duo. The orchestra also played up to the crowd with a mini mexican wave and some vocal additions to the music.
The Opera singers

For Day 2 we headed to Schloss Schonbrunn. This palace has had an intersting history with Napolean I using it for a bit (1805) but it was Empress Maria Theresa who had the building completed in the 1700's. This palace is set amongst amazing gardens and bush land. We were very surprised at the number of people running as it was very cold. Most of the fountains were frozen but there was one still trying to work. After we had looked around the grounds we decided to warm up by looking at the inside, then we saw the queue. So after 30min standing in the cold we finally made it inside.

We found this guy while walking through the bushland in the palace grounds
This clock was in the grounds and was showing the correct time - 10:32am
Queue for the palace state rooms
It was cold
We finished off our trip with another museum to see the greats (Monet and Picasso) and decided to try the famous Apple strudel at the same time. The strudel was ok, but the hot chocolate was terrible. We had a great time in Vienna and in our opinion it is much nicer and more romantic then Paris. Can't wait for Salzburg.