Vienna

While we loved Dresden, we were very excited to be going to Vienna. Neither of us has been there before and we heard so many wonderful things about it. Well, it didn’t disappoint and will remain one of our favorite cities forever.

Our train ride there was the longest we had scheduled as it included a stop and train change in Prague. We didn’t stay in Prague because we were going there for a couple of days after the river cruise. We had about an hour and a half in Prague waiting for the next train, and they don’t post the track/platform number until about 20 minutes before the train is scheduled to leave. So everyone stands in a mass under the large monitors and when the platform is posted it becomes a mad scramble! But everything went smoothly enough and we arrived in Vienna about 3:00. We took a taxi to our Hotel and it was about 3 miles and that is too far to walk with all of our luggage.

We stayed in the middle of the old city at the Hotel Bristol, right across the street from the magnificent Opera House, and in very close walking distance to the best spots in District One and the old city. On our first night we just walked around all of the streets and shops in this part of town. We stopped at a classic street cafe and ordered some drinks and light food. While there a young couple named Diego and Priscilla sat next to us and we spent the evening chatting with them. They were newlyweds from Peru. He is a commercial airline pilot and she was a flight attendant in the past but is now has a YouTube channel that focuses on style and her being cute.

The start of Day 2 was Laundry Day!!!!! We finally ran out of clean clothes and sending our laundry out at the hotel would have cost over $300! So we searched and found a local laundromat named Green Clean. Took an Uber over and the Apple Pay on my phone worked to pay for the machines. It took a couple of hours but saved us $250 and we ended the day with all of our clothes clean. After that on Day 2 we got tickets for the hop on/hop off bus and rode around the city seeing the sights. We wandered around at some sights and just took our time enjoying the entire area.

The first thing on Day 3 was to go over to a tour of the Hofburg Palace, which was close to our hotel. A fabulous trip in history and the tour we took focused on the living arrangements of Emperor Franz Joseph (one of the last of the Hapsburgs) and his wife the Empress Elizabeth who was known as Sisi. It was self guided audio and just great, the only problem was we did not have enough time because Leslie had scheduled a nail appointment for mid-morning. We did some more hop on/hop off bus in the afternoon on a different route seeing more of the newer parts of the city.

We completed our last evening in Vienna with a walking food tour during which we met some new friends from LA and a young couple from Toronto who were also great. This also took us to some parts of the city we hadn’t seen yet and included traveling in the local subway and the streetcars.

We left the next morning for Budapest with regrets for leaving a city we loved but excitement for more new adventures upcoming!