Day 28: Vienna Sightseeing

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A whole day to take it all in. Our sightseeing tour shows you the fabulous Palace of the Hapsburg's, the State Opera House and fashionable Kartnerstrasse with a chance to try authentic apple strudel and Viennese coffee.

Another public holiday, so all the shops were closed but at least we could sleep in as we didn't have to rush into town. Got into the city at about 10 and drove around the Burg Ring, and got dropped off at the Maria Therese statue and Amanda walked us through Hopfburg Palace to the opera house, where we had free time until 3.30.
Went to St Stephen's cathedral, and Julia and I took the tiniest lift ever up to the top. The views of Vienna were great, not that there's much to see though.
went to the Sacre Hotel and had a Sacre Torte, which was divine. We decided to walk around the Burg Ring, going through Stadt Park first, and getting lost at the bit where the map was cut off. We only had 15 minutes to get to the pickup point, and we kept thinking every building was Parliament House and that we were almost there. We eventually found Rathaus PArk, and ran all the way back to the bus, only to sit around in the park for half an hour before we left for schnaps.
The schnaps museum was really cool, rthe office is still in it's original state, with the original cash register and everything. They make 3 differnt kinds of alcohol, the bitters (like absinthe), the liquers (like strawberry), and the schnaps (all taste like vodka - peach, raspberry and pear). In Australia archers schnapps are 15%!,(MISSING) but over here the schnaps are a minimum of 25%!,(MISSING) with the chilli one 56%!a(MISSING)nd absinth 60%! (MISSING)Their absinth has the hallucinogenic ingredient
(i can't remember the name at the moment), which they don't print on the ingredients list on the bottle as it's illegal in Australia, so we can get it into the country. We got to try them, and I had strawberry, hazelnut, chilli (your throat burnt for 5 minutes afterwards), absinth, a gold one which contains flakes of 24k gold, and a proper schnaps which tasted like horrible vodka but had a raspberry aftertaste. I bought the absinth set, which come with 2 glasses and the sugar burning spoon - don't know how i'll get this home yet. After schnaps we went to the Schonbrunn Palace, home of the Hapsburgs. Walked through the gardnes out the back, but the main reason we went there was to get changed for dinner.
Dinner was at a random place out in the woods, in a log cabin type thing. The food was awesome, we had salad, a creamy soup, chicken schnitzel and then apfel strudel. They gave us shots of apfel schnaps, and we had litre bottles of red wine. After dinner they moved all the tables aside so we could dance, and we all had to sing our national anthems. We left there at about 10, and everyone was really trashed, owing to the 'no more sober nights' pact we'd made on our last night in venice, and now included about a third of the bus. This was the most fun we'd had on the bus, we got Amand to play Kylie and we were all up dancing and singing in our seats. I'm sure some interesting video footage and photos will emerge soon enough.

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