vienna, austria

On Satruday morning at 10:30 our bus left the station from Prague and headed for Vienna, Austria, through Brno. The ride went quick as I managed to bust through 300 pages of Dan Browns "Angels and Demons". When we arrived we went straight to The Wombat, our hostel, and got settled in. We spent the night making a plan for the next day and celebrating Jon's 21st birthday. He took the picture below, of our room at the hostel.

The next day we woke up and glanced out the window of the third floor and saw nothing but snow blowing through the streets. Looking down revealed two inches of fresh snow on the ground. This made the day a little bit more difficult. As things warmed up and it started raining everything got slushy and wet. This meant few pictures and even less time outside. We used the time to see some museums.

We went to the Museum of Arms and Armor, The Museum of Music, The Museum of Ephesus (ancient Turkey) and the Museum of Natural History (one of the oldest museums in the world). These offered warm, dry weather and plenty of entertainment for the afternoon. After many hours of walking through endless halls of dead birds, insects, mammels and ancient artifacts, we decided to head back to the Wombat and rest.

The next day we woke up to bright sun and a cool breeze through the cracked window. The weather was perfect and we left the hostel early to take advantage of it. We spent the morning walking through the city. We visited Belvedere Palace and it's gardens. We then made our way to the north end of the city to see the river. Despite it's unimpressive view where we happened to run into it, we knew that the Danube was the longest river in the European Union and the second longest in Europe. At least we could say we saw it, right?

The afternoon was spent in the city center where we saw St. Stephen's Cathedral. It seemed to be the center of attention with a few impressive streets full of shops and boutiques starting at it. Everywhere we looked there were small cities of sheds in preperation for christmas markets. Holiday decorations were strung between the buildings and it was obvious that people were out in full force, enjoying what could be the last dry, sunny weekend of the year.

With the remaining hours of daylight, we trekked across Vienna to the Southern most outskirts of the city. What would a trip to Vienna be without a visit to the worlds oldest existing zoo, Tiergarten Shönbrunn? With a storm rolling in, we called it a day and headed back to the hostel. The next day, we spent the morning lounging in the Wombat before heading out to the bus for a five and a half hour trip back to Prague.