Hello again!!
While Vienna was the city we visited between Prague and Budapest, it will be on my blog as the last city. I wrote it in the order that we went, but for whatever reason, Google Photos was not allowing me to edit the photos and I didn´t want to put them on here unedited. Welp, I don´t care anymore and it is what it is. Hope you enjoy!
We arrived in Vienna around noon, headed to our (nice! super clean!) AirBnB and then immediately went to the supermarket and bought some groceries. At this point in the trip, all I wanted were some vegetables. We bought a bunch of things, then went home and made lunch and then fought the urge to sleep and decided to go out and explore.
First impressions of Vienna
- another “free” tram 😉
- Not many people “out and about”
- Older population
- Conservative
- Classic buildings
We spent the next few ours walking around Vienna, from the outside of St. Stephen´s Cathedral…
…to The Austrian Parliament Building…
…to the seeing the outsides of some incredible looking museums, including the Vienna Museum of Natural History…
And other buildings…
We also found a beer/ food complex of sorts that appeared to be set up for the summer months. It looked like a great place to stop and watch the EuroCup games or watch a movie. We stopped for a beer.
And then continued on our journey.
We walked and walked, eventually coming across, what I assume was, the commerical area, full of every typical store you can imagine. The only thing was, while it was still light out and the streets were full of people, all of the stores were closed! Everything closes quite early in Vienna, including stores, restaurants and supermarkets. Conservative, I told you. No fun after dark!!
We headed home and that was it for day one in Vienna.
The following day, we started the day off a little differently- with a workout!
We lugged our gym clothes and running shoes, so I was set on making sure we used them at least once (and once is all we did, haha). We went to a local park where we started off with running for about 15 minutes (one of us has an injured knee) and then we did a NTC 30 minute workout. They have completely re-designed their app and now it´s AWESOME, which I plan to write about soon, but anyway… I chose a workout we could do with no equipment. He commented that these workouts are “girl workouts”….but let´s just say I´m not the one that complained the entire time…or was sore for days afterwards…. 😉
After our workouts and showers and FOOD
…we headed out for a full 9 hours of walking. That was our highest day of steos- almost 30,000!
Our first stop was the Schonbrunn Palace (Schonbrunn means beautiful spring, according to good ole Wikipedia), an impressive Baroque palace with 1,441 rooms!
We didn´t go inside the palace, but we walked around the vast gardens (literally miles of beautifully manicured gardens, fountains, sculptures, and even a labrynth!).
There is also a ZOO on the palace grounds, which was founded in the 18th century, making it the oldest zoo in the world!!
We were enjoying our time there, but since it was our only day in Vienna, we decided to continue on and headed to Hundertwasserhaus, an apartment block full of various colors and mosaics and gardens growing out of the buildings.
I really wanted to see this block because the pictures looked so nice online, but when we got there…it was completely underwhelming. Everything just seemed faded and drab.
Anyway, onward!
We headed back towards the center and went over to the Musikverein, which is a famous concert hall. We talked about getting tickets for that night´s show because, well, when in Vienna… But ultimately, I thought the tickets were too expensive for what we were looking for and since I have never previously had any interest in classical music or opera, I didn´t need to start with an expensive show in Vienna. #refinedtaste
We headed back over to the commercial area and stopped along the way.
And then eventually headed home for dinner (but not before stopping for ICE CREAM (where I declared that the day I turn 70, ice cream will be a significant part of my diet).
For dinner, we had salads. Balance!
And just like that, our time in Vienna was done! I didn´t love the city (I thought it was a little bit boring), but the buildings were beautiful and another city that I would recommend seeing once in your life. Maybe my tastes will change as I get older and it will be a place that I want to see again in the future. For now, it acted as a good break in what would have been a very long trip from Prague to Budapest. With that, we were off to Budapest, which very quickly became my favorite!