Vienna, Day 1 - the hiiilllllls are alllliiiiiiiive with the sound of Abbey and Jen's muuuuuuusic

On Friday night at around 8:00, we arrived at the Venice train station - excited for our journey in the sleeper car.

Jen had been on a sleeper train before, and had her own car.  Abbey had never been on one before and had a vision of the old-movie trains with curtins, satin sheets and a beautiful lounge car with waiters in white gloves.

Wow, were we ever surprised when we found our cabin - if you can even call it that!  These six (yes, six) litle tiny bunks right on top of each other, were certainly an experience!

Our beds were both the bottom bunks - and were so tiny that we couldn't sit up (it doesn't help that Abbey, the shorter of the two, is 5'9" - and Jen is 6').

We searched for a lounge car so we could sit up, as it was only 8:30 when the train left the station - but, just our luck, there wasn't one.

We headed to our caves, and decided to go to bed.

No such luck - of the twelve hour ride, we probably slept for four hours... collectively!  But, when we got to the station in Vienna there was no time to be sleepy, since we were only in Vienna for 2 days and had a lot to see!

Until now, we had only visited counties that spoke English (lucky us), Spanish or Italian - even though our Spanish had fallen largely away, we knew enough to navigate ourselves pretty well.  And, since Italian is so similar to Spanish, we could at least read signs and figure out what was happening.

However - such was not the case with German!  The only words we knew were Weiner Schnitzel (which, turns out, doesn't involve a weiner/hot dog at all) and "danke".  However, you won't get far in a train station ordering fried viel and saying thank you!

We finally found our way to the correct tram.  The city doesn't have public busses, but trams that are just like underground trains that run on the streets with cable wires.

We found our stop for our hotel (which was quite a feat in itself, since every stop ended in "platz" or "gasse").

Our hotel was very cute - and within walking distance of the downtown sightseeing area.

We both knew nothing (and I mean, seriously, NOTHING) about Vienna or Austria - beyond what we learned int he Sound of Music - turns out there are no troops of singing children wearing leiderhosen dancing through the squares, and there are no nuns galloping through the hilltops.  Sad for us.

Given our lack of knowledge (and inability to find a guidebook written in English) we hired a man named Alex to be our tourguide.  Born and raised in Vienna, this English-speaking chain-smoker knew pretty much everything about Austrian and Viennesse history.

Though it was raining/pouring when we arrived, the sky luckily cleared up, and by the afternoon it was a beatiful, sunny day!

Alex first walked us to the Votive Church, a beautiful cathedral only 2 blocks from our hotel.  He told us the history of the church, and we walked inside to view the beautiful windows.

We walked past Sigmund Freud park, who spent much of his time in Vienna - there was nothing interesting to see, however, so we kept walking.

We saw a music memorial in a park and took our picture - there are dozens of these types of monuments to music, since Mozart, Strauss, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms and Verdi all spent time in Vienna.

We walked down to the main center of the city, where there was great shopping (but, we didn't go in - had to save our money, and see the city!).

We sat in a very posh street cafe for coffee at the foot of St. Stephen's cathedral, the largest and most beautiful church in Vienna.

After finishing our Vienna coffee (our 3nd of the day already, mind you - we were running on caffeine alone!) we walked around and in the church.  There was a mass going on, which was very pretty and nice to watch for a minute or two.

We walked around the entire church, seeing the beautiful roof (which was destroyed in a fire during WWII, but rebuilt in its original form).

At the base of the church on the back side, there is a plaque for Mozart; however, his tomb it not located here.  Because there was a plague when he died, bodies were taken miles outside the city to be buried in mass graves - today, no one knows exactly where he is buried.

From there, we walked through some old-time alleyways, which felt very "old Austria" and pre-wars (since the city was hit very hard during both world wars, especially WWII, much of it has been re-built and is rather modern-looking).

We saw the apartment where Mozart lived for a while, but decided not to go in, and pressed ahead.

We had a delicious lunch at a cafe outside a beautiful old church (there are lots of these in Vienna!) - we split a delicious goat-cheese salad with an incredible pumpkin-seed oil dressing (which we ended up buying later!) and wiener schnitzel with viennese potato salad - it was great!

After lunch, we took the Vienna underground to Karlsplatz, a large square that has an open-air fruit and veggie market, and on Saturdays a flea market.

While American flea markets are actually just stores in one big market, this was truly a flea market - people were selling old, single shoes, old crappy books, broken CD's, old VHS tapes, guns (yes, real ones - scary), and really everyhing you could think of - it was like a giant garage sale (Abbey's mom Vicki and her friend Nancy would have been in heaven - everything was priced to sell).

We both learned the true meaning of the phrase "another person's trash is another person's treasure!"

Abbey found a great old silver tea service, and Jen found some great old European stamps, as well as a great globe - to put on her desk in her law office someday!

After sifting through tables of crap, we decided to move on.

We got on the main tram-line running a circle around the city to see the remainder of the sights - the famous Vienna Opera House, the city hall, the Parliament as well as some museums.

We went to the Belvedere Palace, named for its beautiful view of the city - which was true!

We only walked around the outside of the palace, since we were planning on touring the Schonbrunn Palace the next day.  But, we did take lots of beautiful pictures of the palace, the gardens, the view of downtown Vienna... and of course, us!

We then got back on the tram and headed to Hundertwasserhaus, an apartment building with "creative" architecture.  It was rather Gaudi-esque - Jen said she didn't hate it, but Abbey thinks she is just conditioned to tacky, ugly buildings.

We then took the tram back to near our hotel; Alex had been raving about the gelato at a store near the train station, claiming it was the best in Europe.

Jen and I decided we would be the judges of that, since we had already sampled plenty in Italy!

Turns out, Alex was right - the gelato was INCREDIBLE!  He told us it was because of the delicious, pure water they use, directly from the alps.  We're not sure if we can enjoy Italian gelato again... but, then again, we do live in Venice, so we'll probably make do with what we've got!

We headed back to our hotel, and headed out in search of dinner.

It had started raining again, but we decided to walk somewhere close - since it was a Saturday night at 7:00, we figured lots would be open.

Well, we were wrong.

We walked for about 30 minutes - all we could find were Italian restaurants!  And, there was no way we came all the way to Vienna to have Italian food (though, it should be noted: Jen's favorite food in Venice is the gyro-kabob from a stand around the corner).

We finally found a cute place - it was called Gastmirtschaft Restaurant Zum Laterndl - and since the name was classicly Austrian (i.e. impossible to pronounce and a combination of way too many syllables).

We had a delicious dinner - the "house specialty" prepared by the owner, waitor and cook - all one man.  It was weiner schnitzel and then some - fried chicken, viel, pork, and two other meats of which we're not sure.

After dinner, we headed back - exhausted from our lack of sleep on the train - and crashed in our wonderfuly comfortable beds!