Mercure Pannonia Europaplatz Vienna

... presentations, not for sleeping). What struck us was the amount of work and craftsmanship from an age where tools were hand, not power, and time was not of the essence, but more something required to bring about a good result. Again, we were looking at furnishings and buildings and walking passageways that had been in place before Australia had been visited by Captain Cook.<br><br>In the Palace shop we found the famous Mozart chocolates, called Mozartklugen, which Nel had ...

... on a brand new Austrian train. Murray and I have been to Budapest before and this train station has not changed, for all the wrong reasons. Anyone coming here should not be hoodwinked into thinking it is in the eurozone. They do accept euros and in comparison to western europe it is still really cheap. Two cups of piping hot black tea (we would not have gone near it otherwise) cost ...

... there. This will just be fantastic! In Hongkong, I will surf Pun's couch (see www.couchsurfing.com to better understand the term "to surf a couch") for up to a week. Being in Hongkong then, I will sort out any further arrangements and how I will proceed to mainland China. But for now, I essentially think of "what has to be done here at home before I leave". Step by step ... :)

... shrieks of delight and joy the little girl ran out to some other section of the restaurant. The waitress thanked us, and we went back outside. I have never seen someone so good at creating a team of instant ninja commandos, and she did it all without words. Total skill! On we went, to the next architectural curiosity, the former Gas-O-Meters of Vienna. There was once a gigantic gasifier in Vienna that generated city gas out of coal. Gasifiers are awesome ...

OK so today in the morning I got up at 7 wrote blog for 1 hour then went back to my room.. Got to know my dorm mates a little better!!! Checked out at 10:30 took tram # 13 to the main train staion to go to Vienna. I must admit I am carrying too much stuff!!! OK I was super hungry and so I bought a baguette sandwich (a foot long) for 52 SKK and had the best coffee ...

... The garden leads to a hill topped by a large pillared building. The top of the hill had the most spectacular view that we have witnessed yet. Behind the building is a pond of crystal blue wat**. We realized that it was actually a swimming pond. Now that is the way to swim if you have money. We decided to walk down the hill through the paths in the woods. Once we got to the bottom, I was able to convince Allison that we did not need a "how to make strudel show", so we headed back ...

... Kaisergruft Kirche. It was very impressive. There were statues of knights and beautiful frescoes and sculptures. We found this adorable coffee/ pastry shop that appeared at least on the outside to have really good pastries although it looked incredibly small. We were all kind of in the mood to have some coffee/tea/hot chocolate so we stopped in. We found out there was an upstairs so we went up and found a ...

... Naschmarkt. They have fresh meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, cheese, wine, etc. And many vendors sell the same thing. There are also restaurants along the walk and we ate at a Viennese restaurant which was fantastic. After that we went to a shopping street called Mariahilferstrasse. We shopped for a good while, bought a few things, then sat down at a Starbucks of all places to rest our feet. We then hopped back on the tram and went back to the apartment. Once the boys came home we went ...

... I really liked the Dwarf Garden. Emma and I took a few funny pictures with some of the sculptures. Sylvia is a funny lady; probably my favorite tour guide so far. She got kind of annoyed when Professor Hoelscher and some of the group wandered, so she asked Kristin if she had "some sort of whistle" to call her husband. Emma and I thought this was hilarious, especially because it was just like in "The Sound of Music" because Captain Von Trapp calls his ...

... everywhere. Not good for some people wearing flipflops..... We finally made it into the kitchen and found a good use for our Polish cheese brick (or so we call this Krakow delicacy....)--grated into pasta, it tasted so much better! The next day, we wandered around and went to the Kunsthaus Wien to see an exhibition by Hunterwasser. It was interesting, bizzare and hard to appreciate for non-cultured art folks ...