Stasta Vienna

... to eat at. There was a Turkish restaurant about a
block away that looked good so I decided to eat there. I had a lamb
dish with rice and vegetables which was great. After dinner I headed
back to the hostel and went to the bar for happy hour. I had a couple
beer and met a guy from Ohio. We talked for a while and had a few more
drinks. He mentioned he had saw a ferris wheel in town and wanted to
check it ...

... salt mine. I didn't really know what to expect to be honest, and the tour itself was fairly boring (including the standard monotone presentation voice of the narrator!) but it made up for it when the kids got the chance to go down two timber slides that the miners used to use to descend levels.

The first slide was 21 metres and the second 47 metres... and they were actually a lot of fun. That coupled with a miners train ride in and out of the mine, and ...

... Sport. After leaving St. Stephen's taking stock of our battle wounds, we went back to the Hafburg to go to Imperial Apartments. First, however, was the Sisi Museum and Silverware Museum which were interesting and provided a lot of history on Kaiser Frederick Josef and his empress Elizabeth, aka Sisi. She was a bit angsty but I liked her. After the beautiful Kaiser Apartments we followed the Blue Guide walking tour to the Treasury where we ...

... lined up buying the stuff. Finally, I didn't bother pining this on the map, but we went back to Munich last night and took the train to Vienna overnight. Munich is only a couple of hours by train from Salzburg so we went back to spend the day there. Tonight we're going to take the overnight train to Venice. Just killing time on the internet now because we're exhausted from walking allover Vienna. Take care everyone, hopefully we can continue to blog soon.

Well. Vienna was great. Kat and I thouroughly explored every coffeehouse possible. Vienna is the city of coffee, and we drank alot of coffee. After the first two days we lost count of how many coffee shops we stopped at. We did go to the famous Sacher hotel and try a piece of the famed Sacher torte. It was tasty, especially with the special coffee to drink it with! One of the highlights of the ...

... rules, in case you are interested.) So, along with a megadose of jetlag--12 hour flight and something like six or seven time zones--I got a big shot of culture shock. From Thailand to Singapore to Japan to Vienna inside of two weeks. I landed in Vienna mid Saturday afternoon and after a 3.40 euro ODD train ride I was downtown in Stephanson Square by around 4:00 wandering ...

... for this type of event. Our seats, being the cheapest possible, were all the way at the back but luckily we were allowed to move up to about the tenth row since not all the seats were filled. The room itself was called the Mozart Salon, even though the performance was a Bach composition. The first half was very lively and included a great pianist whose animated expressions were almost as entertaining as the performance itself. The ...

James arrived in Vienna about 10days before us to start his final weeks of exchange from Otago, and had already found some wonderful architecture, and new pubs to share with old and new friends, and now with us. He was still involved in is orientation programme and so he was able to give us good advice about the "must sees". We were very impressed with the wonderful buildings, and charming streets ...

... according to alfred hitchcock, has the most beautiful sunsets in the world. from what i saw, he might be right! the colors were amazing. although the hostel was not. still extremely hot and dirty. last night we were in ljubjana, slovenia, which was a surprisingly great stop along the way. it is very much like an alpine city with beautiful castles and architecture. i climbed to the top of the ...

Upon arrival at the train station in Prague we find our train to Wien (Vienna), our group steps upon the train awaiting a nice, relaxing four-hour train ride only to find that the train is very stuffy and hot. We think nothing of it since the air sometimes kicks on after leaving the station. Nope, not in this case.... It remained a good 80 plus degrees on the train for the whole trip... actually come to find out it was just our car. Some seeked shelter ...