We arrived early this morning to a very wintry Vienna. There was a wind-chill factor that we hadn't really felt up until now but despite the broken sleep on the bus overnight and the 5:30am arrival, we were in good spirits. We had done the right thing and got a map of the city before we left, but the SMS telling us the address of the hostel never came so we still had no idea where to go! Fortunately, Vienna is a 21st Century city and there was a public internet kiosk next to the public payphone where we could get the address. We picked up an unlimited 48-hour U-Bahn (metro train) ticket and headed onward. The hostel is very modern, clean and has a decent kitchen, but it is a little out of the way. It is about 10 minutes walk to the nearest U-Bahn station and that is about another 5 minutes to the city centre (yep, that's "out of the way" compared to the good locations we've had so far). A three-hour nap got us re-energised for exploring, but the weather quickly sapped that. It snowed all day here and will continue to for the next few days, which in itself is quite nice (the snow here is much heavier than in Poland and with much larger flakes) but the breeze makes spending too much time outside unbearable. The 48-hour ticket has already been a good investment. We did go and visit Stephansdom, the massive Gothic cathedral in the centre of the city, which was very impressive. The interior was quite dark, and there were a lot of people inside praying amongst the tourists. We also went in search of a t-shirt and badge shop so that Keeley could add to her badge collection, but it was closed for winter holidays. Other than that we just went food shopping and planned our next two weeks. It was a frustrating process because a couple of the bus companies don't have fully functional websites, but we did it in the end and have accommodation almost fully booked for the next fortnight. It is a very organised state of affairs for us to be in considering we've been almost winging it up to now. In a snapshot, the plan is to go from here to Rome, Florence, Pisa, Venice, Innsbruck, Frankfurt (to watch hockey), Berlin and Munich.
Get what you want at ebay. Get rid of those unwanted christmas presents!
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