Day 3 - Friday 26th October 2012 - Vienna, Austria

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Today was the say we met up with the Contikis. We woke up early to pack and to grab some breakfast. We thought we’d try the normal breakfast restaurant downstairs in case they had more choices but decided to make use of the Executive Lounge. It was a bit better today.. they had marble cake sooooo tasty!!! I stole some Nutella too… its just too good and in convenient packaging :p

We went for a walk along the Danube River outside our hotel, there were millions of of ducks, swans and runners and couple of boats went past. We walked back around to the front entrance and went upstairs to grab our bags to check out approx. 11ish. When we went to the reception Fiona posted a postcard back home to herself which I thought was really odd… (I’ll explain in another post :D)

Really sad to be leaving the Hilton as it was (as the name is well known for) a really nice hotel. Really excited and nervous to be meeting the tour group today.

Got the underground from Stadion to Praterstern were we decided to get the number 5 tram to Franz-Josef Bahnhof, we were scared we would miss our stop but we managed to get off at exactly the right place, it took us awhile to find hotel, then realised we standing right by it!! Only had a tiny sign above entrance. The hotel lobby was insanely nice, so big, really grand and had a very old style feel. It was very clean and the staff were very friendly. As like usual we were hours early (we could only check in at 2pm) to meet the group so we decided to leave our bags in left luggage and go for some food. Luckily (I think :p) we had spotted a McDonalds so went there for lunch, as usual we had chicken nuggets and chips. There was a McCafe in this McDonalds and they sold bubble tea, I was not expecting that at all. We were going to try some but felt really full up after food and decided to get back to hotel in case tour group arrived. I had to buy some moisturiser in shop on way back, my skin was terrible and it made me sad :p

When we got back there was no sign of our tour group but we were able to check in – there was a bit of confusion with room as was booked into a double, but the receptionist finally worked it out. We were in Room 123 which was convenient nice and easy to remember… I’ll remember that easily. The have the weirdest, tiniest lift ever, it was a bit rickety and hardly room for both of us with cases! Luckily only had to go up 1 floor. There was a weird floor layout with little sections of stairs up and down. It was all a little confusing, the area where the lift was was quite posh as well but as soon as you got to the end of the corridor where our rooms was….. Not so much haha. The room was ok, pretty standard to be honest, two single beds but right next to each other like a double. The bathroom was tiny and dated, with 60's style tiles and shower over bathtub. There was one of those little adjoining door between us and room next door– bit scary but seemed locked tight. Not much of view – just out onto a quiet backstreet road. We really missed Hilton room!

Once we had settled in our room we decided to wait downstairs in bar area for everyone to arrive – presumed it'd be soon to have a bit of time in day there to go out and explore as itinerary suggested but that didn’t seem to be the case. We both got hot chocolate drinks while we waited – really nice in glass mug, but super hot! We kept wondering whether people checking in might be on our tour joining in Vienna too, finally overheard someone mention Contiki – he saw us watching him when he came to order a drink at bar and introduced himself - Steven from Victoria, Canada. He was travel agent manager and had free ticket to come and review tour – bragged about it a lot! He seemed ok but bit weird. We sat and chatted for a while until the tour group finally arrived at about 5pm. Massive group, 50+ people!! Wasn't expecting that many! Once they had all checked in we sat and spoke to tour manager, Emma, she was Australian. She gave us leaflets and maps and showed us the itinerary for the time we had in Vienna. She was very nice and friendly. Everyone else seemed to be on higher levels of rooms from us - we thought maybe we were booked into wrong room but Emma said was fine.

This evening was all set up for a group evening meal so we went back downstairs early to meet the others on the tour. We met up with Zach and Pamela who I had chatted to on Facebook before coming. I remember the first thing he asked us… very stereotypical questions about British things – did we like crumpets and best places for fish and chips etc – quite funny. Pamela was nice too, the group seemed already to be in close knit just talking amongst themselves, was a little awkward, but we tried our best to fit in. We got on the tour coach and went to a restaurant in the centre. On board Emma introduced us to everyone – embarrassing! Only us, Steven and 3 others from Malaysia joining in Vienna, but their plane delayed so won't be here until tomorrow. The coach was really comfy and modern. Our driver was called Chris, he was the only other British person on tour – very surprising! There were a lot of Canadians, South Africans and a big group from Brazil. Couple of Australians and Americans too.

The restaurant we went to was called “Restaurant Leupold”, it was huge. Everyone sat in tables of 6 in the large basement room we had booked. Fiona and I sat with Hugo from Hong Kong, and his cousins Beatrice and Ada from Canada, and Steven from earlier. They were all really nice and chatty with us.

My meal consisted of: Starter = beef noodle broth – I think it had bits of omelette in it which was nice. Main = Goulash – looked horrible, tasted…. Odd… my gherkin looked like a green tongue :s Pudding = everyone had lemon and sugar pancakes – yum!

Fiona went with the vegetarian options: Starter = salad, seems very unexciting. Main = very strange macaroni/cheese/cauliflower/potato stuff – looked like white mush and didn't really taste of much. Beatrice worried Fiona didn't eat much so gave her her potatoes, as she didn't like them.

After the meal we had a choice of going back the hotel or out to the bars, we decided to go to the clubs, as we thought everyone would be but a lot went back to the hotel on the coach - so maybe we wouldn't have been so left out after all not going! Emma took us on mini tour of the Viennese "Bermuda Triangle" area, which was the main club and bar district. Apparently today was a bank holiday and hardly anywhere open! Found one place open, but someone went to look and said people were just in there sipping wine and reading books – not the sort of place we were looking for! Other open pubs etc were too small to fit all of us in. Eventually found a pool bar with an upstair area we could all fit in. It was very crowded and smokey (totally forgot you could smoke inside here!! Eurgh, forgot how bad it was!!) Fiona and I just got a bottle of coke to drink and sat with Beatrice, Ada and Hugo from earlier. We didn’t really feel like we fitted in. Tarryn and Nikki from South Africa came and introduced themselves to us which was really nice of them. They both seemed fun and we had a bit of chat. Everyone decided to move to another bar but Fiona and I had enough and decided to go back to hotel mainly because of smoke choking us!

Went to Schwedenplatz underground station, I realised I actually needed the toilet but it was closed :s my moaning then made Fiona need to go too so we decided to go for a quick hunt outside. We surprisingly found a McDonalds outside station. There were signs all around saying we needed a code for the toilets so bought some chips to get one – the lady at till said no code needed though when we asked for it! Good to have something else to eat all the same. Toilets were really horrible and dirty but we were so desperate by now hehe!

We took the train back to Friedensbrücke station and walked the short distance to the hotel. We tried to fumigate our clothes in the wardrobe by spraying lots of body spray then closing door. Didn't really work very well. Slept ok but missed the Hilton beds.

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