The bus trip through to Vienna was long...... The weather is starting to get really hot.... One of our stops along the way was at a service station and we couldnt help but laugh at some of the things they were selling. There was T-Shirts and cups etc with pictures of Kangaroosand they said "There are no Kangaroos in AUSTRIA". We guessed they were for the Japanese tourists.
By the time we arrived in the capital, we were pretty hot and bothered. To make things worse, the hostel stuffed up our booking and only booked for one person. We had one night in a dorm room then were ment to move to a private room the night after. So for the first night Krystal had to sleep on a very thin mattress on the floor, and we still had to pay!!! After a bit of backchat to the girl behind the counter we finally agreed to pay a reduced fee. The room was so hot and tiny so needless to say we didnt get much sleep. The wholeplace was booked out as Austria are the hosts of the Euro cup.
That night we ventured into the heart of the city, which is completely taken over by soccer. The whole centre is fenced off for "Fan Zone" where everyone goes to watch the games. It was a pretty good night cos there were so many people there. Spain won and there were alot of spanish people there. Beers were so expensive..... I miss Prague...
Next day we met up with the regular crew to explore the city. Because of the soccer, none of the city tours were running so we were left to our selves. We first went to the Schonbrunn palace which was home to the Hapsburg family. They were an austrian family which basically ruled most of Europe for approx 6 centries. We have heard this name in EVERY country we have been to so far as they have ruled everywhere. They are basically the reason Vienna is so beautiful and has some many recognised buildings. When we saw the palace, you could tell they had money... It was HUGE. Biggest palace in Austria and the most elaborate. The gardens them selves took an hour to view by a small tour car. It also had amazing views over the whole city.
We also looked around the muesum district etc however it was really hard to get around because of fan zone taking over everything. Unfortunately alot of things were closed off so we didnt really get to see much else.
That night we went on our pub crawl, 4 cities in a row for pub crawls now.... It was the usual crowd we catch up with in each place. We went along the Danue river as there are alot of bars and clubs and it is a fairly new area, but the pubs we went to were so dodgy. The first one was run by what looked like a vietnamese drug lord. The last night club was pretty good but apart from that it was pretty ordinary. To get home we had to catch 4 seperate buses, it took forever.
The next day was even hotter, but we did have our own private room with a fan (not air conditioning though). We decided to go to the pool, but of course we got there and it was closed because of the soccer. We then asked a local where the best place to go and we were told to go to the river, which was near where the pub crawl was. We thought it might be a bit yuk, but it ended up being so fun. The water was actually pretty nice but bit smelly... There were dogs everywhere and it was a good day.
We found a nice Indian restaurant for dinner that night and had a few drinks with friends as a few of them were heading off a different way the next day.
Vienna was a little bit disappointing, mainly because alot of things where either closed or surrounded by fences for the soccer. We were planning on going to the opera but ran out of time, you can get really cheap standing tickets. Maybe next time.
