Vienna - July 17, 2012

This post is actually about a week old, but we've been busy and wifi is hard to come by in Croatia.

Cathedral at night in the city center

Vienna is simply magnificent. It's very stately and proud of its long standing history as  the capital of the Hapsburg empire, and later the Austro-Hungarian empire. Palaces, opera  houses, and museums litter the downtown streets, and the architecture is all very stately. Every time you turn a corner there's a 200-year-old fountain in front of you.

Sarah wants a pet otter.

We spent four nights here, in a nice hotel just outside of the downtown core for 65 euros a  night. The first was probably the best. We wandered around downtown, found a pool bar where we had a drink and played an hour of 8 ball, then had gelato, wandered into the Vienna Film Festival where they were playing Phantom of the Opera on a building-sized screen (in German of course), then had an amazing hot dog creation which is a bratwurst stuffed into a bun that's sealed on one end so the mustard doesn't leak out.

Shoenbrunn Palace

We certainly saw why Vienna always ranks as the most livable city in the world. The metro  system is second to none - you can go from anywhere to anywhere trivially and quickly.  Prices are good, not much more expensive than home. Everything seems very well designed, and it's the little things that you notice. A garbage can is never more than 20 meters away. The metro shows you how many minutes until your train arrives. Streets are clearly labelled for walking, biking, or driving. The pedestrian-only streets were just buzzing with people all day.

Need two hands to take a self shot with a DSLR...

We didn't get to see as much of the city as we'd have liked because we were sick for these  few days, but we visited the Shoenbrunn Palace and Zoo over a couple days, and the Natural  History Museum where we spent an hour staring at the precise differences between various  kinds of rocks. I know, I know, but we had a good time. 

Then we took a 7 hour train to Budapest... :)