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After breakfast we set off back to Hertz to see if they had my phone, the very helpful young fellow said he would find out and we had to come back between 1200 and 2pm, not feeling very hopeful we had no choice but to go see the sights of Vienna. This is a great city with a huge amount of classic buildings built circa 1800 with so much fine detail and stunning designs, adorned with statues and fret work close the French penchant for over doing the detail. Austria dates back to Roman times with a garrison built around 100ad driving the current celtic inhabitants north, a small settlement was started adjacent the garrison area began. Around the 10th century the turk Emperor Otto 1 started an outer eastern province called Osterick, Vienna and was ruler for some time during the next few hundred years both the Hungarian and European peoples ruled here. Napoleon had a crack in the 18th century and in typical French fashion lost this as well. Since then Vienna has blossomed and now today is a stately modern city and as with the rest of Austria neutral by act of parliament as are the Swiss. We
walked the main thoroughfare to find the Stevens Dom a centrepiece of Vienna, built originally in the 12th century was sacked and destroyed twice the last time in 1945, by ‘fire’. Rebuilt again after the war it now a stunning church despite being very dark and gloomy inside. Visited St Peters church which was stunning and wandered off to the Burgher tor and adjacent gardens. Time then to go back to Hertz and lo and behold they had found it, so Zac lost his phone overseas and got it back as did I.
Time to go back and we treated ourselves to a horse drawn carriage ride through Vienna which was lovely, the carriages are fitted with disc brakes, bit of a laugh really but I suppose safety comes first. We next headed off on the team to see the town hall, parliament buildings and the Votive church. Our tram was suddenly halted and we were not allowed to leave, it appears that there is some local disturbance up ahead and the road is closed. Finally some 10 minutes later we were allowed off and we walked up the road a ways to see what the commotion was. We
found a huge police line in full riot gear and a few dodgy looking characters milling around. Thinking this was pretty cool we hung around awhile and Pam took some pics, nothing appeared to happen so we wandered off. We found the beautiful Votive church only to find is was covered in scaffolding with advertising banners all over, very disappointing. So nearing 5:00pm we headed back to the hotel before dinner.
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Zac
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Those cathedrals are stunning, I would love to know how much it cost to build those. I'm really enjoying the blog, I read it as soon as I get home, you must be having such a good time over there, despite the poor weather.