Yesterday, I checked out of the hotel in Salzburg, and took the fast train to Vienna.
I liked Salzburg. The old town was gorgeous, Unesco certified (or whatever), and was surrounded my mountains and rock. The Mozart and Sound of Music connections (classy for the former, annoying for the later) are intriguing. But I have been here for 5 nights, and being that it is a relatively small city, I was tired and ready to move on.
The train ride was on a train called RailJet, which sped 220 KM/Hour in some spots (Monitors we're placed in the rail cars conveying this information). Even in economy, the seats we're quite comfortable, and power plugs and free-wifi was in place. The nearly 3 hour ride was quite comfortable and went fast. The only downside was I bought the tickets the day before online for 57 Euros (maybe $70)- which necessitated bugging the lobby at the hotel to print out my tickets. (they don't like to do things like that. 1 person there said no-but someone else said they would). Had I just bought the tickets from the kiosk at the station, it would have been 51 Euros.
After arriving in a rainy Vienna, I checked into the hostel, and went on my smartphone to search for an English-language bookstore. I was sure I lost the book I was reading (I found it later in my bag after I bought a new book-but I was almost done with it anyway). I took the metro 2 stops and found the bookstore. The prices on the books we're all in US dollars, Canadian Dollars, and British Pounds. The price in Euros for the books we're heavily inflated. After looking around for probably 45 minutes, I bought a copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court for 14 Euros ($10.00 was the price on the book-which meant the conversion should have been around 8 Euros). or so. I mentioned this, and she said she needed to run the bookstore-so I bought that and bought the book.
Afterwards, I walked around in the cold rain past the cathedral, and had dinner at a seafood restaurant called Nordsee. They are a fast-casual chain, similar to Chipolte, but they have good herring, salmon, etc. Yes-before I was bitching about the intense heat, and now the rain. I even considered paying $50.00 to a guy in a Mozart wig to attend a Mozart concert in a classy opera house. Being that I saw a Mozart concert two days before, I didn't particularly want to attend another, but the opera house looked warm and dry. (BTW, Mozart was born and raised in Salzburg but moved to Vienna later-so both cities capitalize on the connection).
After that, I went back to the hostel-it was about 9:00. I took a nap-I then went down to the lobby and read a little.
