Vienna to St. Veit

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It was bags out by 7:00 am so we could leave about 8 am. Breakfast was OK and I had my first chef-made waffle on this trip. Sara told us about the Vienna Woods, the dense mostly pine forests from the low valleys to the highest mountains with vineyards in the valley areas. We also learned about the Summer Barden Festival and how Beethoven tried to cure himself from deafness in the naturally occurring and healing thermal waters in the area. She told us about Strauss’s composition “Tales of the Vienna Woods” which she played on CD while we were driving. We traversed the Austrian Alps over the Simmering Pass where we delighted in all the elegant hotels and villas and heard of the World Championships in downhill skiing recently. We eventually crossed into the Styria Province, the southern most state in Austria and she pointed out that we were not very far from Arnie Schwarzanegger’s birth place near the city of Grans. We took a break in the small town of Kindberg, known for its large and wildly decorated Maypole. We traveled into Corinthia Province and to the small town of Frescha that has a moat around the original city walls We finally arrived at our next hotel in St. Veit (named after St. Vitus), checked in, freshened up and about 30 (out of 39) boarded the bus for another optional tour of Bled Lake and Town. The rest had the rest of the day to tour around St. Veit.

We started out on our optional tour to Bled and stopped first for a light lunch at a truck stop café. Our lunch cost us 30 Euros because we were not acquainted with the ala carte style of everything costing money after being told that if we chose a small plate it would cost X amount, medium more, and large most. We looked at our slip after sitting down and noticed that 2 large pats of butter was about 7 euros. We made a commitment to not do that again but rather buy a sandwich from the cooler. After our lunch, we continued towards Bled, but took another route over a high mountain pass to avoid waiting for ½ hour to go through a tunnel that was being repaired. Our bus driver, Walter, deserved a medal for navigating the treacherous zig zag turns over this pass. After arriving safely at Bled, we took a short walk to the Villa Bled (which is now a hotel but was President Tito’s of Yugoslavia villa home for about 14 years after World War II and had a very nice large slice of a Vanilla and cream cake, that was originally made by the local baker in town. We next boarded two large gondola boats rowed from the back (like in Venice) to head to an island where we each had the opportunity to ring the church bell, a hotel staff person showed us Tito’s former hall where movies were shown (John Wayne was one of his favorites) but is now a meeting room, concert hall, etc. and also showed us where Tito’s working desk was.

It was getting to sunrise when we left and we only had to wait 20 minutes to go through the tunnel so we started the movie Mr. Bean (British humor) which we watched until we arrived back at our hotel about 7:30. We had a nice buffet at 8 pm (after hearing that the internet was down so we could do e-mail or post this blog (so we are 2 days behind now, but we will catch up at the next hotel tomorrow. This is a one-night stand so we leave again tomorrow night. Had a very nice and long conversation with Australian Family of 4 but what would you expect from the Down Under folks.

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