Blogs from Vienna, Austria, Europe - page 6

Our trip started off on Sunday with a night in Bacchus Marsh enjoying pizza and red wine – Banks Thargo and Rymill, of course - with our gorgeous friends, Michael and Yoshiko and their fabulous children! We drove to Melbourne on Monday morning to catch our flight to Singapore. Our flights to Singapore, Frankfurt and Vienna were smooth and without incident although the security at Frankfurt was tough…we had to place the tissues from our pockets into the trays for inspection! It’s all a bit daunting for the weary traveller but we eventually booked in to our hotel in Vienna and rediscovered the joys of soap and water after 24 hours without! We had a quick walk into Vienna’s main square and a bit of a look around but decided we’d save it until the next ... read more

We left Charlotte on Sunday July 21st to journey to Vienna, Austria to start a 10 day tour of Austria and Switzerland. The three flights to arrive at our final destination were relatively smooth and each flight arrived early. Leaving Charlotte at 3 p.m. we landed in Vienna at 1:25 p.m. on Monday, July 22. We are traveling with Globus Tours and expected to wait until 3:30 for our pick-up, but to our delight our tour director was at the airport and we were soon on our way to our hotel. After checking into our hotel we grabbed our cameras and headed out to the Botanical Gardens and the Belvedere built as the summer residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy. The grounds are decorated with many Baroque statues, gardens, fountains and waterfalls. After exploring the area, ... read more

Arriving into Emmersdorf was so very welcomed when the general distance measure had exceeded 100 kilometres. ‘Are you tired’ said our Hungarian host, Henriette. Affirmative. Those laden saddle bags saved us from a dry and simple dinner. Out came the tea, miniature wine, beer, nibbles, and vegetables we’d stocked up on, knowing now that the smaller spots were minimally serviced and usually very quiet. Someone somewhere over the river however was having a blindingly good night by the sounds of it, changing this backwater to that with a thumping background bass. To 5am. We were too tired to notice and with sun up early it roused us to appreciate a gorgeous and warm morning. Heat of the high 20s was ahead. That good advice of the Persenbeug café owner stuck with me, that I went off ... read more

Time really does fly . Our 2 /2 days in Vienna were good . Although it was raining it wasn't particularly cold and I was dressed for it . I really enjoyed the walking tour we did . To fuel up we stopped at the market for lunch first. . I had a great falafel plate with hummus olives and pita. Very tasty . The falafel was moist and had a lot of parsley mixed in . I think k it was even better than Afghan falafel which has potatoes mixed in to kèep them moist ..Our tour lasted close to 3 hours and the guide had many stories to tell . The old town has palaces horses, galleries , museums all housed in incredible buildings ranging in age from the 1300,s Of them all I ... read more

Ah, we finally arrived! Vienna's airport seemed way smaller than O'Hare, and wasn't at all busy. We made our way to baggage claim, and easily found the taxi stands. We took a pretty expensive taxi ride to our hotel. That's the thing when travelling with Mom; she is almost 79 and is over the skimping in life. I probably would've taken the 16 dollar train, but the taxi was quite nice after such a long, sleepless flight. Our driver was nice enough, but we did hit some traffic and it took us about an hour. I didn't have much of an impression of Vienna yet. My mind was so tired, it could barely form thoughts. We finally made it to Holiday Inn Vienna City, and checked our bags. We weren't able to check in for three ... read more