Ah Vienna!

Wien

Our RailJet train trip from Budapest took about 4 hours and we arrived in Vienna (Wien) around 5 pm at Westbahnhof station; and after walking the full length of the very long platform with our backpacks, grabbed a taxi to our hotel (The Carlton Opera on Schikanedergasse), south of the main city centre. Our apartments were located at the rear of the hotel through many a winding passage and stairway, on the 2nd floor. The rooms were spacious (very spacious indeed) with lots of natural light and consisted of two bedrooms, kitchen, dining and a bathroom as well as an entry foyeur. However, not nearly as well-equipped or comfortable as our Budapest apartment (well, perhaps we had been a little spoiled by that); and with very poor WI-FI services. But ... the hotel was well-located to the metro and (we soon found) next to the famous Wiener Nascht markt which sold all manner of exotic produce and had small, smoked filled pubs serving warm goulash and schnitzal and cold beer.


The weather had decided to rain for the 2 of the 3 days we were in Wien, but that didn't dampen our enthusiasm to get out an sight-see. A highlight for me was finding the Gymnasium school where the young Erwin Schrodinger was taught. 


In keeping with our usual modus operandi, we set ourselves a couple of tasks. For Geoff, it was to find a zoom lens for the camera that would do justice to the photo opportunities for wildlife in Africa. For Deb it was to find a pair of 8x50 binoculars that would do the same - both tasks successfully completed (two ticks!). We found the binoculars at an interesting little optical store, just around the corner from our hotel, which also sold microscopes and astronomical telescopes and mounts (the good ones, of course).


Of course, we had already completed our first task as soon as we arrived, which was to buy tickets on Friday's RailJet to Munich.