Holiday March 2014: Vienna, Austria

So here's some fun facts about Vienna that you may or may not know before I start telling you what we did there!
- Vienna is the capital of Austria.
- Vienna is home to the world's oldest zoo.
- Over 300 balls are held there each year.
- The legal drinking age and voting age is 16, but the legal driving age is 18. 
- The world's oldest Ferris Wheel is in Vienna.
- Vienna has Europe's second largest cemetery.
- About 1/4 of Austrian people live in Vienna.

Part One

Day One: Monday, 3rd March, 2014

It was a long day that involved getting up at 6am to take the bus to the train station at 7am, to get on a train at 7.30am that took me to La Roche Sur Foron, then I had to get a coach from there to Geneve Eaux Vives, walk to Geneve Cornavin and get on the train to Geneva Airport! To make things worse, the direct planes to Vienna were a lot more expensive than planes with a change, I had to travel via Rome. In Rome I was hoping to get some nice Italian food but the only pizza/pasta place in my gate had no pizza and no pasta left! In the end I found a mozzarella bar that had mozzarella and parma ham paninis, so really I just had a fancy ham and cheese sandwich. I eventually made it to Vienna by 6.30pm, so it took around 12 hours to get there! When K arrived about 8pm we took the tube station to the hostel (Wombat's City Hostel - The Naschmarkt) and got settled in. 

1. View from the plane when I woke up.

2. View coming into Rome.

Day Two: Tuesday, 4th March, 2014
We had a lazy morning and just after noon went to a place called Cafe Museum for a breakfast of Apple Strudel and another Austrian pastry of some kind. We had a wander around for a while and came across the Vienna State Opera (built between 1861 and 1869), the Spanish Riding School in Michaelerplatz (the square was created in 1725, but the Spanish Riding School wasn't completed until 1735), and the Museum Quarter. I really liked the buildings in the Museum Quarter, they were all quite grand and mostly from the Baroque era. We went into the Museum of Art History and the Museum of Natural History, and passed the Austrian Parliament Building (the foundation stone was laid in 1874 but the building wasn't completed until 1883). We also saw the Town Hall (built between 1872 and 1883) which looks a lot like a cathedral to me, maybe because of it's Gothic architecture, and it had an ice rink in front of it with a lot of food stalls. We didn't go ice skating but we did have a cheesy hot dog (as in the cheese was inside the sausage!) and a hot chocolate. Then we took a walk by the river and after looking around for somewhere to eat we eventually settled on a Vietnamese restaurant that served some fairly tasty food.

1. Michaelerplatz

2. The Museum of Art History and the Museum of Natural History

3. Me inside the Egyptian Exhibition

4. K with the cheesy hotdog and hot chocolate

5. The Town Hall

Day Three: Wednesday, 5th March, 2014
Another lazy morning for us before heading off to the Museum Quarter again. This time we went inside the Armory Museum which also had an Ephesus Exhibition. Then we went and got burritos for lunch from a Mexican restaurant; it was the first time I'd ever eaten burritos and they were pretty tasty! On the way back we went to look at St. Stephen's Cathedral (the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna and the seat of the Archbishop of Vienna; built 1339–1365) before heading back to the hostel for a nap. Then we went to the Auersperg Palace (built between 1706 and 1710 in Baroque style for Hieronymus Capece de Rofrano) for a concert by the Vienna Resident Orchestra with a tenor singing for some songs and some ballet dancers accompanying other songs. 

1. Inside St. Stephen's Cathedral

2. Outside St. Stephen's Cathedral

3. Decorated buildings as seen from our hostel

4. The stage inside Palace Auersperg

5. K and I at the concert

Day Four: Thursday, 6th March, 2014

Today was a Palace visit day and overall lazy day. We walked to the Palace from our hostel which was about 4km away and took us around an hour, maybe more because my foot was playing up. The Palace itself is called Schönbrunn Palace (it was constructed between 1638 and 1643, but the land had previously housed Ketterburg Mansion, which was built in 1548). We didn't go inside the palace because we didn't want to pay for the tour, so we just had a wander around the gardens instead before heading back to the hostel for a lazy evening. In the garden's there was a gloriette, which was built in 1775 as the last building constructed in the garden according to the plans of Austrian imperial architect Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf von Hohenberg as a "temple of renown" to serve as both a focal point and a lookout point for the garden.

 
1. The tree tops were fairly straight
2. Me in front of Neptune's Fountain
3. The back of the Palace
4. The front of the Palace
5. The Gloriette in the gardens of the Palace

Day Five: Friday, 7th March, 2014
We had a wander on the other side of the canal, mostly so that we could visit the Reisenrad/Ferris Wheel (built in 1897, it is a 64.75m/212ft tall Ferris Wheel at the entrance of the Prater amusement park in Leopoldstadt, and it was the world's tallest extant Ferris Wheel from 1920 until 1985). We wandered back through the town centre and went to Camelot's Restaurant for tea. The menu looked really good but the service was quite slow and the food was not as tasty as it sounded on the menu. I had a dish called Lady Vivian's Favourite Dish and it was supposed to be chicken with honey and apple and cucumber; I was a bit wary of their being cucumber in there but thought I'd give it a go. When it arrived it looked amazing but they'd put some much honey in there it was way too sweet, and the cucumber just seemed wrong. They could have easily swapped it for courgette and it would've been much nicer!

1. The view from the Ferris Wheel
2. A building I liked but have no clue what it is
3. The Hochstrahlbrunnen Fountain
4. The Ferris Wheel
5. Inside Camelot's

Part Two

Day Twelve: Friday, 14th March, 2014
The first half of the day was for travelling. We had to catch the coach from Prague to Vienna; it was a bit of a rush because instead of taking the Google Maps route, I decided to take the easiest route which turned out to be more like a main road that had no pedestrian path! We eventually got on the bus, and it seemed to take longer than on the way to Prague even though it was the same time as before. We then went to find our hotel (Hotel Vienna) which was quite fancy but not worth 182€ at all! The sauna wasn't really a sauna, it was just 2 small heaters that warmed up a strip of your back or your front, the room was really hot and had no thermostat, and the bed was just a little bit too hard so I woke up feeling quite stiff. So, the hotel was a bit of a let down but nevermind! We went for dinner at a place called Le Loft for dinner which cost us 190€ with tip included, but it was worth it! We had a four course meal with drinks: I had seasonal vegetables, sweetbread of veal, cheese course (shared) and a mango and passion-fruit soufflé; K had scallops with some sort of sauce, venison, cheese course (shared) and an 'Apple Sphere'. The Apple Sphere was a sphere of green crystallised sugar and it was filled with a sweet apple flavoured sauce with a scoop of ice-cream right in the centre. After that it was back to the hotel to try out all of the cool things in our room before heading to bed ready for the early start and travelling we had to do to get home.

  

1. K and I ready for our fancy meal

2. K in the restaurant

3. Me in the restaurant

4. Our room

5. Our room

Day Thirteen: Saturday, 15th March, 2014
The final travel day and it was stupidly long, like it was on the way to Vienna. It took around 14 hours for me to get from our hotel in Vienna to my flat in Annecy. This time it was a tube to the airport in Vienna, plane to Rome, plane to Geneva, train from Geneva Airport to Geneve Cornavin, walk to Geneve Eaux Vives and then a coach back to Annecy. The planes were horrendous, not the actual flight but the organisation: I'd already been waiting around on my lonesome for the flight to Rome for over 2 hours, but then it was delayed an hour and was only announced half an hour before boarding was supposed to start; when I got to Rome I was sat waiting at the gate when suddenly the board changed to a different flight, so I had to go back to find the departures board and then run across the airport to a different gate entirely to get my plane. Worse still, there wasn't even an announcement for the change! I was pretty tired and miserable by the time I got back, so I was very happy to see my bed!