Wet, cold, windy and wild Vienna

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This time the train was much more to his majesty's liking (someone had complained a little bit about the first train and wanted to go first class on the return trip to Vienna).

Our return to Vienna was not auspicious and the weather was very cold, grey and windy. Our first impression of our new hotel was that it was in the middle of nowhere. We went out for a walk in the afternoon after we arrived and our impressions were being reinforced, right up until the point that we stumbled across the main shopping street that was two blocks away from our hotel. Right at that point it started to rain, and it didn't stop for the next three days. Much to our dismay.

Vienna itself is just so lovely, it was such a shame that we didn't get to see it in the sunshine. I really wanted to rent one of the city bikes and cycle around and see the parks and gardens, but given that we spend most of our time huddled under an umbrella, that was just not possible.

So instead we spent our time in the museums and palaces. We went first of all to the Hofburg we were saw the imperial apartments, the porcelan and silver collections (which I loved and Jeremy hated - I guess that was the equaliser for the bodies exhibition), the Sissi exhibition (Sissi was Empress Elisabeth of Austria) and the treasury.

The next day was spent going to Schloss Schonbrunn palace and seeing more royal apartments. This palace was stunning but was completley ruined by the fact that there were these huge tour groups that would stop in each room for an age, which meant that you couldn't get past them into the next room. The next thing you know there is a huge queue of people waiting to get into each room. Which was really annoying! And the weather was so miserable that you couldn't stand to be outside for more than a couple of moments, which meant that we couldn't visit the beautiful gardens.

So we consolsed ourselves with tea and strudel again in a cafe.

We took a brief tour on the hop on hop off bus (which was nowhere near as good as the one in Dubai) and then just plain gave up and went and sat in a restaurant.

Day three was no better. We attempted to walk down the street to go and see an english movie, but the weather was so lousy, the movie cinema shut, that we just headed to the airport 5 hours early so we could at least stay dry.

So all in all another visit to Vienna will be required at some point in time as our visit did not do it justice.

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Photos

Imperial Porcelain
The piece was a gift to the imperial family but was so delicate that it could not be used for the purpose that it was made (custard dishes)

The imperial table napkin fold
Only two people in the world know how to fold the napkin in this manner and they carefully guard the secret apparently.

An example of the weather
View from the bus

Comments

[MUM]

Better luck next time but at least it better than working,