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We arrived in Vienna around
3pm, and went to the first Wombats hostel we saw. Turns out there's three of them in Vienna, and the closest one on the main strip wasn't the one where we made our reservations. We didn't have to walk too much further to find the right hostel but it was a little off the beaten path. The staff at the Wombats were really friendly and helpful, and could answer almost any question we came up with. It had a bar that served alcohol and snacks, breakfast buffet, a pool table, foosball, a sun terrace, and laundry facilities (which we desperately needed!)I was excited to see that Vienna had a lot of cheap street food, predominately kebab and falafel joints. After getting situated we decided to go exploring, which was suddenly interrupted by a downpour. We had umbrellas but it rained so hard that they didn't do much good, and our feet and pants were soaked. We decided to take refuge at a gelatoria and sat at a covered outdoor table to watch everyone else fight the storm. We decided to call it quits and head back since the only thing to do on the main street
was shop or eat. Back at the hostel we redeemed our free drinks, played some pool and then went out again to see how the falafel in Vienna compared to Florence. The bar in our hostel usually stays open until
2am, but since it was so quiet, the bartenders decided to close around 11. Consequently we called it an early night.The next day we decided the only way to escape the shopping district and cover more ground was to rent the city bikes. They have stations all over town and you register your credit card with a kiosk, pick a bike and ride it to the next station closest to your destination. It's a cool system that is free for the first hour, and the price escalates the longer you use it. The idea is to use them from point to point, not keep them for the whole day. You wouldn't be able to stop just anywhere because the only way to lock them is at the stations. The bikes were an inexpensive and efficient way to get around. As we cruised we witnessed a few really awesome, gothic looking churches, museums, parliament, theaters and parks. We decided to stop
at the museum of natural history and check it out. The museum featured a dinosaur exhibit, but also had interactive simulators from caves to the universe, and an entire floor dedicated to zoology. The zoology exhibit had about 12 rooms of taxidermied animals species ranging from birds to sea mammals to bugs and reptiles, and everything in between. The most exciting thing about the museum was a realistic velociraptor, operated by a person inside of it, that lurked around the corner of the room, scaring the bejesus out of the little kids. It was an extremely life like costume that moved like the real thing and had the kids running or crying. So funny! After spending nearly 2 hours at the museum we decided to call it quits and get back out into the sun. That night we met a 21yr old from Toronto at our bar and convinced him to go searching for bars with us. They recommended some bars on the map, so we tried to find the ones closest to us. The first one was called Pandora's Box, which was a dingy, dive bar that tried to charge the boys €5 cover! We quickly bolted for the
door. The next bar was a notorious Aussie hangout, appropriately called Down Under. It was dark, candle lit, and had about 3 people other than us drinking. The bartender was fun, friendly and rowdy. We ended up getting a lot of free drinks out of him and the locals at the bar. It's always the times that we spend the least amount of money that we get the most drunk! We finally found our place around
4am, two confusing cab rides later, since the first one dropped us off in a spot we didn't recognize. The next day was beautiful and hot. We slept in, sunbathed on our terrace and finally got the energy to take the bikes out again. We rode across town in search of the river, and found a sandy bar along its banks. It was a really chill hang out with a dj, free lounge chairs, tables and delicious drinks. We had one there and headed back to get ready for our four year anniversary date. Unfortunately there's not a lot of restaurants on our side of town so we had to settle on a traditional Viennese place just down the street from our hostel. Luckily
our waitress warned us about their portion sizes because our meals were massive. Kevin got a huge plate of spareribs and I ordered gnocchi big enough for 4 people to share.We ended the night back at our bar, played a little more pool and got ready to head to Prague the next day for the last six nights of our trip.
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