My boss Catherine said this to me and I seem to have a fair few things in common with her so I convinced all my friends that this is where we shall spend our Easter holiday. Not that we had many more options. Prices for flights were insane, everything seemed booked and when it looked like I would be spending my four day weekend in Mannedorf , Sara found a sweet deal to Vienna by night train. Hhahahahaha I lied - it was not sweet, we were sitting in a little room for 6 people for 9 hours. I have never tried sleeping sitting up and I even said to Lacey in the middle of the night on the way to Vienna "I'm catching a plane home" IT WAS HORRIBLE!
The picture attached is me smiling and excited - trust me, about 3 minutes into that train ride I was frowning and moaning!
But enough about that!! Once in Vienna we had to decide where to go! Thankfully our accomodation was nice
and we were in a reasonable location. Vienna has an excellent metro system and was well signed! As it was our first day we started out by just wandering. Vienna is a huge city!! Stephens Basilica was breathtaking and is where we ventured into for the day. We saw went on a tour of the caticombs and got to see where the bones of hundreds of people were kept, it also really thrilled me when I got to see an urn filled with intestines leaking... not sure about any of you back home but body parts dont impress me (Lacey!!!)By mid afternoon I dont know about the other girls but I was fading and the three coffees I had downed were not doing anything so we spent the rest of the day strolling and sitting, doing a loop on the tram, wan
dering to Parliament and we met up with a guy who was friends with Svetlana and we went out with his friends for dinner at a restaurant called Einstein!!Now Lacey and Manda are all for trying the local cuisene where as I am like "give me the stuff I know 'cause I am on a budget", but we had a great dinner that night of dumplings and bacon and onion and a sauce which was really nice! Kind of like massive spatzli.. oh you dont know what that is either, mmm well it was really good anyway!
After a great nights sleep we decided to spend Saturday at the Schonbrunn Palace. It was a sunny day and there was lots to do at the Palace such a explore the rooms of the Palace where the Austrian Emporers lived, get lost in a labrinyth and hahaha make Sara think we were helping her get to the end when really hahaha we were trying to make her get lost!!! Umm we climbed a gazillion stairs to the Gloriette for a fantastic view of the city and sadly we paid to see an Apple Strudel show but we missed it - thankfully though we still got the samples and it was fiiiiiine (delicious in german).
One of the events that happened in Schonbrunn that wasnt part of the program was the appearance of all these little squirrels that I swear looked like mini kangaroos. Some lady had nuts which she was feeding them and she gave us a bunch so Lacey and I spent a good ten hours sitting at a table tapping nuts (ummmm might explain why we missed the strudel show... whatever) so that the little squirrels would run up to us and take the food. It was great and it was so fun watching them!!!
Saturday night "Lacey the great" found us a wine tavern! Hahaha did I say found, sorry she got us to a wine tavern after we walked a whole metro stop in the WRONG direction! Hhahaha but it was cool - wine in beer mugs for a tiny 1.60 euro!! We had fun laughing at our squirrel videos for half the night while Sara had a sip of wine and Svetlana struggled to keep her eyes open!!
Easter Sunday I went with Lacey and Sara to the United Methodist Church of Vienna with a friend of Mandas from Zurich. He now lives in Vienna so he met us and took us with him which turned out to be great! He was such a cool guy and he had us in stiches for the whole day.
Church was nice and I really liked the service. Considering I am not a regular church go-er I found the service easy to follow and it was good to remember why we celbrate Easter in the first place.
The rest of the day was spent scarfing down food at TGI Fridays an American restaurant with the best food ever and then lazily strolling stadt park!! The whole day I spent dredding the night train home which left from Vienna 9pm Sunday night. Thankfully though the train was less crowded on the way home and we did manage to get more sleep than the first time round.
Unfortunately though I lost my wallet in Zurich when I arrived on Monday morning. I am not sure if I was pickpocketed or if I simply put it down somewhere but by mid-Tuesday VISA informed me that someone had racked up a whooping $600 on my credit card so I am led to assume that maybe my wallet was stolen.
It has been such a drag organising all new cards, buying new train passes, sitting for photos for a new licnence, etc - it is so difficult especially since I am on the other side of the globe but VISA exceeded my expectations by sending out a courier 2 days later with a temporary visa card and increasing my card limit by 200o dollars!!
Hopefully I will not have to pay the money that this loser spent but I wont know for another 6 weeks.... aghhh the things that happen to me.
So basically I would recommend Vienna if you catch a plane there. I will go back I think because it was a beautiful city and I feel like I didnt get to see as much as I would have liked. The Austrians too speak German so it was nice to hear a language I am familiar with. There is so much I still have to see though so maybe next time I am in Europe I will go there again.... For now I am focused on summer holiday destination....
But thats all for now, probably blog again about my past weekend tomorrow night! Ciao xoxox
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