More wandering in Vienna

Today was my last of three full days in Vienna. Having already done the two things I wanted to see, I decided to just cruise around the city, taking whatever photos I could, mainly basing myself around the Hofburg.

My Vienna Flickr set is now complete and available at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645485796815/

My first stop was at a local guest house called the Pöschl, to try another of Vienna's specialties: the Wienerschnitzel. It's basically battered veal, but with a local seasoning. Having done it once, I'd say I probably don't need to eat it again. The dish's traditional sidekick was a quite nice stodgy potato salad:

 Wienerschnitzel and Erdapfelsalat

Someone once described Vienna to me as a city stuck in the 80s. I can certainly see how - smoking is still standard practice, not only in numbers outside but also inside many popular restaurants.

I'd also heard very good things about Zanoni & Zanoni, a local gelateria. Their range of flavours was enormous, and it was quite cheap too:

Zanoni's range of flavours, in enormous buckets

Munching my gelato (which was absolutely delicious), I headed towards the grounds of the Hofburg. The Hofburg originally started as one building, before repeatedly expanding. It now includes a massive variety of buildings and gardens. There is the occasional map of the area, but you are mostly left to your own direction:

 My Hofburg favourites

Some of the other querky things I saw in Vienna today included 'No Kangaroos in Austria' t-shirts, an automated petrol station in the middle of the old town, and underground toilets. Oh, and the enormous museums are weird. The first photo is of a Papyrus Museum. Seriously. Only in Vienna:

 

 

 

Only in Vienna

The Hofburg took me through until basically the end of the day, and the end of my time in Vienna. My next update will be a trip report of my overnight sleeper train to Venice.

An inner-city theme park

Today I decided to ease off on running around madly, and instead have smaller days, seeing a little of what the city has to offer. The Handelskai walk along the Danube River and the Prater were my two targets for today.

I've added my second day's photos to my Vienna set on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645485796815/

But first off, I decided to well and truly trash my diet while I was in Vienna. I went to a small coffeeshop near the city park and had a slice of Sachertorte, which is a famous local chocolate cake with apricot jam and Schlagobers, what the Austrians call cream (which is different in Austrian-German than German-German). It was quite moist compared to the reviews I'd read about the 'original Sachertorte' on TripAdvisor, which complained that it was quite dry, and it was less than half the price. I had an evil brownie-flavoured milkshake with it:

My diet-busting afternoon tea

I then got an S-Bahn to the far end of the Prater area, where there is a lovely stretch of the River Danube that all the locals go for a walk/ride/jog on. It's an amazing section of river, split completely into a west bank walk, an east bank walk, and is even split in two by an island, where there is another walkway. I stayed on the west bank the whole way:

 The view of Handelskai

I then headed to the Prater. It was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be: a place for kids to enjoy overpriced, tiny rides while adults sit around and consume overpriced food. We're talking €5 for a small ride on go karts. There's some bigger rides for adults as well:

 The Prater

I also managed to eat a whole Lángos, which is a Hungarian dish mainly sold in the Prater. It's basically double-deep-fried bread coated in salt. The photo I took of it on the table doesn't do its enormous size justice, here's a photo of me about 2/3 of the way through it:

An enormous Lángos

The Ferris Wheel at the Prater is also something of a national icon. I took a fair few photos if it, and it was nice that I had a clear blue sky in the background to do it with:

The Ferris Wheel at the Prater

That was basically all I got done today. After I got back to the apartment, I headed out to an Indian place I found nearby that sold mango chicken curry, which is a favourite of mine back home. It was a little spicy for me, but still quite nice:

Spicy mango chicken curry

Palace and the city

Having made a late start and gotten to my second Airbnb host a little later than I had planned, I spent a little bit of time working out my approximate schedule for the day. I had always wanted to visit Vienna, but knew it was more about the experience here rather than seeing everything there was to see. There were a few foods I wanted to try while I was here too.

You can see the first of my Vienna photos in a Flickr set here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645485796815/

First stop was Schönbrunn, which is the main tourist attraction in Vienna. As well as the famous castle, there is a myriad gardens and flowerbeds, a Gloriette and one of the world's oldest zoos. After a U-Bahn trip to the castle, I started walking around. The weather was exceedingly average while I was there, but the whole place still looked amazing. The place was full of Americans and Asians - very few non-German-speaking Europeans.

In the park you go around the castle, through an area littered with manicured flowerbeds to the Neptune Fountain, then up a sizeable hill to the Gloriette. There were many photo stops along the way, and it was nice that I was still able to play swapsies with people taking my photo. It was nice that everyone also thought the photos I took of them were very professional-looking. Photography skills - on the improve!

I wanted to go and see the cemetery, but it was difficult to find the entrance to, so I gave it a miss. I walked past the edge of the zoo, where, could you believe it, there were more emus. Seriously, come on! I've now seen more emus in Europe than I ever have in Australia.

I had a bit of a spill walking down the hill - the dirt paths slope off deceptively on the sides. I was amazed that no-one gave a rats - they all just kept on walking even though I took a pretty good tumble - all my stuff was covered in dirt and I was bleeding a little. Maybe they didn't like the look of me. The resulting blood clot on my hand is exactly shaped like a 'J' - it's very weird.

On the way back to the exit, I stopped at a couple of extra photo points, including a couple of the gardens. Here are some of my overall favourites from the park:

 Favourites from Schönbrunn grounds

I headed into Stephansplatz directly afterwards, where I took some photos of the cathedral. It's a massive cathedral, surrounded by office buildings and shops. It was so tight I had to step into a corner and switch my lens out for the ultra-wide-angle:

The enormous cathedral at Stephansplatz

My next stop was the Stadtpark. It's one of a few parks in the centre of Vienna. It mostly felt like just another grassy area for the locals to hang out, but there was also a flower clock and a tribute to Johann Strauss:

Flower clock in Stadtpark

Afterwards I headed across to the Hofburg around sunset. More details about it later, but I did get some nice sunset photos. There was also a dancing lesson going on in the area, with lots of people dancing in formal dress. I also spied a 'free opera sitting', where there's a giant screen outside the state opera where people can sit outside and watch the performance going on inside:

Tidbits of Vienna and the Hofburg

Dinner today was a little different. I was growing tired of seeing only kebab and noodle shops, so I went with this sausage roll-type thing, except with potato instead. In hindsight, I should have considered what I would be eating over the next couple of days and eaten something more healthy, but there you go:

My unhealthy dinner

Until tomorrow everyone!