Vienna
Friday, July 22, 2005
We got up and headed out, after marking on the map the main things that the Lonely Planet book had recommended. Got off the metro two stops early, intending to walk a bit before getting to our first stop. Only to find that we were right in the middle of stop two for the day. This was the Habsburgs summer palace, and it was amazing. They make everything massive here! Just the grounds themselves where impeccable, then the buildings completely surrounding you, I would say that the buildings look to be better cared for than in Prague. Was getting on to lunch by the time we had finished walking around the palace, so we went to the baker. We ate by the park looking towards the museum island. (there are a number of very impressive museums here).
We walked around the museums for a bit but after I saw how much it costs just to get in we decided that we would rather spend the money going up the Ferris-wheel instead. So off to the other side of the city it was to stop number three, giving up on stop number one (the cathedral) as we had seen it yesterday. The under ground makes a big difference in city’s! You just don’t have to think or wait, you just need to know what direction that you want to go, so needless to say we were on the other side of the city in less than ten minutes. And lo-and-behold as we walked up the stairs there smack in front of us was not just a Ferris-wheel but a whole amusement park! By this stage we needed more money so we went to the ATM only for it to tell us that we had ‘insufficient funds’ – not too good when you’re in the first week of a two month holiday! But we managed to scrape just enough money together to go up the Ferris-wheel. Apparently the ATM’s over here like to trick you, a joke that I thought was really funny I tell you! Anyway after walking through a really pleasant display of the Ferris-wheel and it’s history we where on our way up! I must say about now that the weather in Vienna is the coldest that we have encountered since NZ, and it was actually quite windy, this made it all the more fun though. But what a amazing view.
As we had a little money issue, we left the theme park in pursuit of a working ATM. It’s really quite hard here to check your money situation, you kinda just leave it and hope for the best - well that’s what we’ve been doing anyway, but the next ATM didn’t have a problem giving us money so I’m assuming that we still have some.
As we wanted to use our ‘CityTourPass’ to its full advantage we then decided that just jumping on a ring route tram was a good option. It took about an hour and a bit, but we did get off at one stage because we saw a supermarket and needed some supplies. It’s really nice to have a pass where you can just get on and off without thinking twice.
That was about the end of our touring day we managed to see quite a lot of the city and as Sarah has a bit of a cold we don’t really want to push it too much – especially as Munich is coming up and I fully intend to have a good time there! But after a rest we wanted to sort out some of our holiday… This is proving to be relatively difficult, on the net we couldn’t find accommodation anywhere in Salzburg. We have decided to chance it and see if there is something when we get there but not a nice thought really. We have however booked three nights for Munich. But we are feeling a little bewildered by the increasing prices through the rest of Europe, it’s been very difficult to book anything under 20 Euro per person per night even in a dorm. And in some places even booking now for a week’s time is ridiculous 40-60 Euros per person per night. This has been a real eye opener to get booking and organise our tour otherwise we will spend all our money on accommodation. Although food and general living is still pretty cheap it’s just too stressful to spend that much on a place to sleep!
The Summer Palace
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
