Vienna Austria

Trip Start May 01, 2007

Trip End Apr 29, 2008

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Flag of Austria Vienna, Austria
Friday, July 6, 2007

Vienna for us was a very laid back experience. We really didn't feel rushed at all to get anything done, so we just sort of wandered aimlessly for two days. We didn't see much, or do much, but it was fun nevertheless.

We picked up a pamphlet for a self-guided walking tour of town from the tourist office, and set off on that. St. Stephen's Cathedral was a wonder that we came across early on. The architecture was incredible, the murals beautiful, and the gawkers plentiful. We walked through nice city green spaces, saw the Imperial Palace (from the outside, of course) and even saw a giant protest full of kids who, as a local cop put it to Terri, were "protesting that they don't want to go to school, all they want to do is party." When she replied that you'd never see that at home in Canada, the cop smirked and replied "Only in Austria." Later that day, we ran across a "peace protest", then attended an organ concert in another local church

01 St. Stephen's

. The organ player sounded like he could try out for a heavy metal band or something, but it was still quite nice.

Next day, we ventured to a few city-run museums. We started off with buried Roman ruins, continued onto a classic clock museum (now I know what some of you are thinking, and it was actually quite interesting) and finished off with a museum showing the history of the city's omnipresent fair. The taking-it-easy theme continued that night with some book reading, and some alcohol drinking. This IS a vacation, after all.

Vienna was a gorgeous city, but without blowing a ton of money, I'm not too sure what we would have done if we could have stayed longer. One good activity though is dodging all those people dressed up like Mozart trying to sell classical music concert tickets. €30/person...no thanks.

Next stop: Budapest.