Hotel Mercure Wien Westbahnhof Vienna

... come across before, and found them to be gooooooooooood!<br><br>At the end of tour, we decided to go to the Prater, to find dinner. The Prater is a large park, set on an island between the River Danube and the Canal, and was previously a Royal Hunting Ground (sound familiar to Hyde Park?) that was gifted to the people by Emperor Franz Josef. The park has a large fairground, and is known world-wide for its Ferris Wheel.<br><br>Passing roller coasters, dodgems, shooting ...

... 1.50 euro in total and there is no way you would even get one ice lolly for that in the east.<br><br>Our bags are stashed with food and drink along with every possible variety of wet wipe available on the UK market! Our emergency ration is one block of Orkney fudge that did not quite survive the heat and subsequently got squashed, hence it did not become a gift at the office in ...

... so I read for a bit over some coffee and cake in the Café Central. After that I bummed around the inner city for a while, grabbed a Käsekräner for dinner and then fought my way through the blue-lippers in Karlsplatz to head back to my Hostel. The next morning I went out to Schönnbrunn to climb up to the Gloriette and snap some pictures. There was a crazy lady up there feeding the flying rats, so a few of my pictures are ...

... they can take any flammable solid and produce a flammable gas, that then burns pretty cleanly (e.g., your city doesn't smell like coal fires/wood smoke/gas because all the molecules are totally combusted). The gas output from this gasifier (which must have been enormous), was stored in bladders, inside these four very tall buildings, called, collectively, the gasometer, because you could see the bladder rising and falling inside, through the building windows ...

... for 10 SKK from a vending machine (chose the option kapuchino with Kremo - something like that!!!!) My train to Vienna departed at 11:50 and reached at 12:50. One tip if while buyig a international ticket you dont mention that u want a one way ticket sometimes they assume that its a return trip and issuee u a roundtrip ticket!!! I reached Wombat's hostel ...

... the metro train. That night was the opening c**emony and first games of Euro 08. This is the European socc** tournament that happens only ev**y 4 years. Think how wild us Am**icans get ov** any one of our big yearly events of any one of our three major sports (sorry hockey). Now imagine that Socc** is THE ONLY sport all europeans love with a passion, and it is a national thing that happens once out of four years. Austria and Switz**land are the host countries for the 08 tournament ...

... large coffee house upstairs. We ordered a drink and a pastry. The waitresses were really cute, they were wearing traditional dresses with aprons. When they brought our orders out I was blown away. Just the presentation of our orders were artwork. They looked to good to consume. But the taste was even better than the presentation. I got a cappocino with a little strawberry sponge cake. It was soo delicious!!! The ...

... dinner at a small restaurant down the street and since today is National Pork day here in Vienna supposedly they only had pork. (FYI, a pork bone killed my dog when I was younger, so I don't eat pork much) They finally found something for me to eat. Again, remember, this took some time because of the language barrier. The most exciting part of the evening for me was going to the most famous coffeehouse in Vienna. The place is called Cafe Central. It was a gathering place for ...

... using a whistle. Later in the evening, we all had dinner at the Steigl Brewery. The food was good, and I liked the restaurant because it was up the mountain a little ways, so it had a good view of the town. Emma, Natalie, and I tried a Rasberry beer called a Himbeer Radler, which was amazing and very unique. I want to try to get it again tonight at dinner. Our hostel shows "The Sound of Music" every night at 8 p.m., so some of us wanted to hurry back ...

... me, but at least the building was neat! This guy was definitely a hippie--arguing for integration of nature into manmade spaces and buildings, and arguing that straight lines are artificial and less beautiful than curves. Hence the building floors were uneven and consisted of waves and bumps. A unique experience. After that, we wandered around Stephansplatz, saw the church and were planning on going to this ...