Vienna and Happy Birthday Jim

Next stop is the city of Vienna. It was a full day on the train so by the time we arrived, bought some supplies and settled in to our little (but cute)Airbnb, our day was done. The adventure won’t start till tomorrow, Jim’s birthday!

It’s cold here. Not only cold for us after the warm sunny South, but cold for the Viennese too. Just a cold snap. We don’t have days to waste so we layered up, dug out the toques and mitts that we had packed and hadn’t needed yet, and headed out. (Evidently my touque and mitts didn’t make my last cut – why would we need those? – oh well – pull up my hood and go. We were still shivering. We found the Ubahn (underground subway) station close to our place and studied the maps until we had an idea on how to get around. We bought two day passes and headed down to the old historic city centre.

Vienna is famous for many wonderful things including; wiener schnitzel, the Danube River, coffee and cake (Sacher torte and strudel as well as many other kinds) musical fame, Lippizaner stallions, many palaces and the waltz. We are going to try to delve into as many of those things as we can. We started, of course, with coffee and cake. We went to a little cafe when we got off the Ubahn and had coffee and Apple strudel. We are going to try to get in at least 3 birthday cake tastes today.

After breakfast we wandered the city centre. We toured St. Stephan’s Cathedral, the Hofburg Palace including the Lippizaner horse riding school, the Easter Market on the square in front of the palace square, Peterskirche, and we signed up for a Travel through Time historical experience about the history of Vienna using 5D cinema, animatronic figures and a virtual horse-drawn carriage ride through the city. (Because we needed to do something inside and warm up.)

Our goal was to find an authentic little Austrian restaurant to have schnitzel for Jim’s birthday meal. We found it – almost more by accident than research. We had chosen one and read the reviews but when we got there it was closed for refurbishment. As we were walking back we went by one on a side street that was busy and locals were coming and going, laughing. We wandered in and had a great lunch. Schnitzel and fried potatoes in vinegar with a green salad on top. Delicious. Jim’s kind of food and it was a great birthday meal.

After lunch, we had signed up for a historical tour to learn a little more about Vienna history. When we showed we learned that I hadn’t done a good job of reading the fine print and the tour was in German!! Tomorrow is English! So we flipped it till tomorrow and headed home to warm up. After a break and adding some more clothes we went for a walk around our neighborhood. We knew that Prater was close by but not sure what it was. We were pleasantly surprised to learn it was an historical amusement park founded in 1766 by the Emperor. Historically it had puppet theatres, snack shops, Merry-go-rounds etc. It was partially destroyed in the war but was rebuilt and today it is a blend of old historical venues and modern rides. It was so neat to tour. It was huge. We walked and walked and probably only saw half of it.

On our way out of the Prater we found a sausage stand, – we got sausage dogs for supper (after our huge Schnitzel dinner and two cake stops it was just the supper we needed.

To finish an awesome day – Jim and I met up with two great Foam Lakers tonight, Sheila and Peggy McLean. We all went to a Vienna Vivaldi concert together in a beautiful church. Sheila and I worked together for two Provincial Elections. We loved working for Sask Elections and we loved working together and often when we were working extra late, we would remind each other that we were working for “cream” money to travel and make life sweeter. Who thought we would actually end up in Vienna at the same time with some of that cream?
Love it!!! It was great to see them.
*Sheila and Peggy are here cheering on Brandt in the biggest basketball tournament in the world. Go Brandt!!