Weiner Schnitzel!

We LOVE Vienna (yes, you're jealous and you should be!) This city is fantastic with so much to offer! We travelled here from Budapest with one slight panic attack on the train. We were reviewing our hostel booking and because we had to switch rooms at the hostel, it seemed like it only booked one person for the 1st 2 nights instead of 2. Could have been disasterous, but the hostel had lots of space so disaster averted....it turns out that we didn't even have to switch rooms. Our first night at the hostel we met a fellow Canadian, a girl from the UK and a bunch of Australian guys. We hung out with them and E and I almost convinced one of the Australian guys that yes, we were in fact from Canadia (why else would we be called Canadians?) and that the plural of moose is meeses. Our fellow Canadian let him in on the truth and probably for the best as he was starting to get quite upset with us. But truth be told, he was believing us!!! We ended off the night at an Australian (surprise, surprise) pub with the crew before calling it a night.

We wanted to start the next day off with a walking tour as we have done in every other place, but the tour didn't start until the afternoon. We wandered down Mariahilfer Strasse, the main street into town from our hostel, and found ourselves in the Museum Quarter. We putzed around there for a bit and found a couple of museums that we could potenitally go to, and took the metro back to the hostel to meet the tour group. There was only the 2 of us, along with 2 American teenager boys (they told us they were 20, but the jig was up when they started yapping about getting drunk off Grand Marnier....seriously). We say all the main sights...back to the Museum Quarter, the Hofberg, parliament buildings, the Spanish Stables, the Opera House and St. Stephen's Cathedral. The tour guide was getting as tired of the teens as we were as she essentially told them to get lost and go climb the tour in the Cathedral while she showed us all the 'cool' places to go out. It was actually pretty hysterical. She also showed us the best place for schnitzel in town, so we decided to head there for dinner. You haven't seen schnitzel until you've been to this place...imagine 250 grams of weiner schnitzel falling off the plate because it was so large. Yes, we took pictures! It was delicious, but neither of us could finish it.

We started off day 2 by going to one of the museums we say the previous day, the Kuntzhalle, to see the 2 featured exhibits. It was really pretty cool, and that's alot coming from a non-museumy person. The 1st exhibit was awesome, a Chinese artist who was really into the melding of Western and Eastern thinking. The 2nd exhibit was a bit different, it was called 'Dream and Trauma'...think the weirdest things you could even imagine being called art. I didn't really care for it, and actually had a hard time calling it art. Our next stop of the day was the Opera House. I can't even put into words the awesome-ness of this building, it's completely indescribable. Both Erin and I gasped as we walked into the main concert hall. We went on a guided tour and it was great...the house puts on 60 operas a season, with a different one playing each night. We would have loved to go to one, but unfortunately the season doesn't open next week. Oh well, we'll just have to come back! We walked through the Cathedral and went off in search of 'Sand in the City.' Think a Hawaii-esqe beach and bar area in the middle of the city with huge sand castles to boot. We didn't pay to get into see the castles up close but we did relax on a lounge chair with a pina colada! We felt very civilized, I'm not going to lie!

Day 3...our last day in Vienna. We went out to the Schonbrunn Palace...we originally thought it was like Paris and Versailles, a day trip out and back. As it turns out, it's only a 15 minute tram ride from the hostel. Absolutely stunning!!! We didn't go in for the tour but got some fantastic pictures from up on the hill. The next item on the itinerary was to go in search of the famous Sachertorte. We took the Metro back into town and found a very popular cafe that had it. Has to be one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted! We then window shopped at all the places we can't and probably will never be able to afford...Gucci, Prada, D&G...why do we torture ourselves?!?

We are off to Salzburg tonight and by tomorrow, the hills will be alive...with the Sound of Music that is! We are already singing and gearing ourselves up for the tour!

Signing off from Vienna,

Megs