Day 230: North to Vienna

Time to leave Graz and head to one of my favourite cities in the world, Vienna! It was a bit of an awkward transfer though, since we'd booked a fairly early train (11am) to save money (the price for afternoon trains was doubled). And annoyingly, when we'd requested to book our Airbnb in Vienna, the host originally said check-in was available between 9am-5pm. Perfect, it's near the Westbahnhof so we can arrive at lunchtime, drop our bags at the apartment and then go exploring.

But when we requested to book, she said it was only possible to check-in at 6:30pm, and was that OK? But then she confirmed our booking, meaning that if we cancelled we would lose 50% of our now-taken payment. We could probably have gotten it back from Airbnb, but it didn't seem worth a fight. In the end, we arrived at the station and left our luggage in a locker for 4.50 euros instead.

Interestingly, this train journey travelled along a World Heritage listed section of track, the Semmering Railway, one of the first and most famous mountain railways in the world. Since we didn't have a car, actually seeing the railway was going to be difficult so we decided to just ride it and film as we went. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake - most of the interesting stuff was out of the southern side of the train, looking directly into the sun. Most of my footage turned out crap since all you can see is the reflection of my phone/hands, and dirt on the exterior windows.

We didn't really even get to see much of the engineering works aside from going into tunnels - there's 16 impressive viaducts along here but you obviously can't see them when they're underneath you. I'm not sure whether I'll end up creating a video for this or not - if it's just crap footage I'm not real keen to put my name on it.

Anyway.

Arrived in Vienna around 1pm, dropped our bags off and grabbed some lunch at the Westbahnhof. Not really knowing what to do, we decided to just catch the metro into the centre of town and have a wander. So that's what we did!

It's such an incredible city, the history, architecture and culture that just oozes from every building, street and alleyway. From the enormous and impressive like the twin history and art museums fronting an enormous statue of Empress Maria Theresa, to the small but moving Plague Monument it's all just so impressive! Definitely one of my favourite cities.

Wandered around for a couple of hours, then took refuge in a cafe where we had coffee and cake - sacher torte, the local speciality. Chilled out here for a while, then did a bit more walking while Shandos shopped for a new handbag. The one she'd bought in London wasn't performing to expectations (no shoulder strap, not enough interior pockets to put phones etc) so she was on the hunt for a replacement. No luck today though.

Finally it was 6pm so we headed back out to the Westbahnhof, collected our luggage and walked the 10 minutes to our apartment where we met the host. Apartment is very large and thankfully very tidy for a lived-in place - apartments where you're just living in someone's place while they're away tend to be super hit-or-miss. Nice load of stuff in the fridge for us which was good, though the wifi is a bit patchy and the place stinks of cigarettes which gave us both a headache after a couple of hours.

Headed out for dinner to a takeaway place nearby called Mr Schnitzel where we both had enormous schnitzels for dinner. Tasty, though not the healthiest option!Read more