Blogs from Vienna, Austria, Europe - page 100

Well we have just explored the wonderful city of Vienna, we are thinking of putting a bid in on one of the palaces around town. Just another fixer upper project for the Chuba boys, hopefully flip it for a few million. Just have to work on the bankloan first. Well we arrived here yesterday afternoon and got off our lovely AIR CONDITIONED train ride and into the sweltering heat off the West Bahnhoff U-Bahn station. We proceeded to go "UP" the street as our directions told us. Seems our hostel was in fact "DOWN" the street. So after about a mile and half of extra walking and what seemed to be 2 pints of sweat from our backs we arrived at our hostel. Another gem of a hostel, we got upgraded into a private four person ... read more

Okay, maybe that title was just a cheap excuse to use the word "Wiener." We arrived in Vienna on Friday after a short one hour train ride from Bratislava and found our way to Hostel Ruthensteiner. The hostel was great - really clean and bright and well-run, and best of all, they had washers and dryers. We spent our first morning/early afternoon in Vienna just doing laundry (first time we've had a dryer since we went home for Christmas!) and catching up on email. Later in the afternoon we ventured into the city and headed to the Kunsthistoriches Museum, which holds the Hapsburgs' collection of European art, as well as an Egyptian art section that we didn't have time to see. The museum was great, if a bit expensive. That night we walked around for ... read more

We spent another day exploring a bit of the city and walking around. We had some delicious austrian food and then decided to head to Innsbruck to crash for the night before taking a train the next day to Garmisch-Partenkirchen to meet with one of my college friends living there, Kim. Aaron decided to read the arrivals board rather than the departures so we missed out train to innsbruck and instead decided to go to Munich for the night and catch a train to Garmisch in the same fashion the next day. The train took about six hours and we arrived in Munich late to crash after grabbing some food and realizing that our hostel was likely next to every sex shop and strip club in Munich. ... read more

Woke around 11 am to check out of our hostel and relaxed a bit before grabbing the train to Vienna. I decided that Budapest was one if not the favorite city I have visited so far. The city was incredibly beautiful with tons to see, gorgeous women walking everywhere, cheap everything, great nightlife, relatively few tourists, and very friendly people. I easily could have stayed in budapest for another week. We arrived in vienna after a short three hour train ride and fortunately our hostel was very near to the train station. We walked a bit and found the place called Wombats hostel which was quite a bit different from any of the previous ones we had stayed at. First off it was extremely large, seemed more like a hotel than a hostel. It also ... read more

Today was our last day in Vienna. We started by taking the U2 to Karlsplatz, where we transferred to the U4 to Hietzing, which lies on the outskirts of the Schonbrunn Palace area. After walking through the Hietzing Gate we came to the Palmhaus. The Palmhaus is the largest and last remaining palm house of its kind in Europe and houses flora from every continent. I became quite enamoured with a turtle inside who seemed to pose for the pictures I was taking of him. After the Palmhaus we strolled closer to the Schonbrunn Palace and walked up the winding roads to the Gloriette, a building that was commissioned by Emperor Joseph and Empress Maria Theresia in 1775. We chose not to pay the admission to go inside because the building does not look like ... read more