Devin's Travels: Vienna

After a short train ride we arrived in Vienna and quickly found our hostel and still not feeling the best we decided to have a short nap before setting off to do some sightseeing. So after our short rest we made our way to the metro and went into the centre of the city where our first stop was the massive St Stephen's Cathedral. Upon exiting the metro station the cathedral was right in front of us so we felt that we should spend some time admiring it and we even had to back up down a nearby street to fit it all into a picture. After admiring the front of the church we entered it to see the beauty that was inside of it. Afterwards we wandered all around the perimeter of the church where there are supposed to be circular grooves for standardizing the size of bread loaves and some iron bars for measuring the lengths of cloth; however, we couldn't see them and part of the church was being restored so we figured that they were hidden behind there. Leaving St Stephen's Cathedral we walked along some nice (and busy) pedestrian streets to the nearby Hofburg (Imperial Palace) unfortunately by the time we arrived it was getting late in the afternoon so we decided to save the tour of the palace for another day and instead just admired the exterior of the palace for a short while before setting off to find the Kaisergruft (also known as the Imperial Vault). Upon reaching the Kaisergruft we descended down into its basement where we got to tour around hundreds of tombs all belonging to the Habsburgs. The tombs were all extremely decorated with carvings and some of them were quite eerie, it was truly fascinating. After touring the Kaisergruft we decided that we were feeling hungry and tired so after tracking down a delicious Wiener Schnitzel restaurant we made our way back to the hostel and fell asleep at the wonderful hour of 7 pm.

The next day we woke up nice and early after our early bedtime the night before and after enjoying a small breakfast we set off to explore the Hofburg Palace. Entering the palace we got to take a very well done audioguide tour of the Silberkammer (silver chamber)m Kaiserappartments and Sissi museum. The silver chamber wasn't that interesting as it was just hundreds of dishes that the Habsburgs owned although the audioguide did give some interesting stories about some of the sets. After the silver chamber we entered the Sissi museum which gave a great life story of Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) which went into great detail about her obsession with her looks and with traveling. Finally in the palace we got to tour the Kaiserappartments which were extremely beautiful and set up exactly how they used to be. Upon leaving the palace we enjoyed some sausages from a street vendor before checking out the Museums Quartier, a huge area dedicated to museums, which we wandered around a bit but decided that we would rather spend our short time in Vienna seeing other sights rather than seeing more artwork. So we quickly left the Museums Quartier and made our way to Cafe Central, which used to be a favourite spot of Herrs Trotsky, Freud and Beethoven, and enjoyed a cup of Viennese coffee along with a slice of the famous Sacher Torte.

After coffee and cake we took a short ride on the tram circling the city centre to get a glimpse of other sights such as the university and city hall before returning to our hostel. At our hostel we signed up for a walking tour of Vienna and as we waited for that to start we put in a load of laundry. Unfortunately when we went to meet up for our walking tour we found that the group must have left a little early so instead we just did a small tour of Vienna in the evening on our own, seeing the city hall, palace, and cathedral all lit up at night. After our tour we grabbed a quick bite to eat and returned to our hostel for an early night as we were still feeling a little sick.

The next morning we woke up feeling much better and set off to explore the Schloss Schonbrunn (the Habsburgs' Summer Palace) and upon reaching to site we began to explore the massive gardens. The gardens were extremely beautiful and perfectly manicured and since the day was quite nice we spent quite a while wandering around them enjoying the views and the day. After enjoying the gardens we went to attempt to get a ticket for a tour of the palace only to find that we would have to wait an hour and a half before we could even enter the palace and at this point since it was our last day in Vienna we decided that we didn't have time so instead just returned to the centre of the city. Back in the city we grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading to KunstHausWien, an art gallery designed and dedicated to Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Here we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying his fascinating, although quite unusual, artwork while walking through his even more unusual building as nothing was straight (not even the floors). Afterwards our last evening in Vienna was spent enjoying a simple meal and still taking it easy as neither of us was back to 100% yet.

The following morning we got up and quickly packed before heading off for the train station where we boarded a train for Bratislava, our next destination.