May 8

Thursday morning we arrived in Vienna. We were woken up by the train attendant at 5:30 (our train arrived at 6:00). It was a rough night. I think the driver was mad we got to sleep and he didn’t it was a rough, start and stop ride all night long. We arrived at hit the Metro station, and grabbed us a 72 hour pass, since we were going to be in town for 3 full days. We made our way to the Hotel de France, which was an amazing nice hotel. Wow. They were offering a discount if you stayed 3 nights, that plus Hotels dot com, we were doing really well. They let us check in early again! We were 3/3 on that aspect of our trip. We always go with the intent of storing our luggage and returning in the afternoon, but so far this trip they let us check in every time. Since we were at our hotel at 7:00am and we did not sleep so well on the train. We decided to grab a couple hour nap before we got started. We got back up at 9:00 and were out the door by 10:00. We got to shower too! Awesome! We started walking, we were in the University area of town (which I thought about applying to pursue my PhD) and found a great outdoor restaurant that overlooked town hall and a park. We had a great lunch and then headed on our ad-hoc walking tour. We found random statues, sculptures, Opera Houses, Theaters, Parliament, and Hofburg Palace.


We headed for Stephensplatz which is the main town square. Thousands of people are here daily all hours of the day. It is centered around St. Stephens Cathedral which is massive. We did the unguided tour of the sanctuary, and paid for the guided tour of the catacombs. Wow that was impressive. Remains of people are just sitting on the shelves from 1000’s of years ago. They talked about closing the catacombs for about a week last year because one of the vats was leaking (apparently, you turn into a black goo after 1000 years) and it really stank. We then walked into the new part…which is actually the old part where there are mass graves and places where they had thousands of bodies buried during the plague. These rooms you can look into (and reach in a touch if you want. Thousands of bones from people that were buried here, stacked like firewood. There was one American tourist with us that kept asking the dumb questions. Wow. I tried to not let anyone know I was American. I see why we get bad names. “Are their dead people in those coffins?”, “Do dead people stink?”. She is probably a Hillary voter.



Anyway, after an awesome tour of the catacombs, we headed up to the top of the church to get a panorama of the city. Always a highlight, plus it helps to orient me.



We finished in Stephensplatz and started walking to another old church that was a sight. We passed by another attraction that was a clock between 2 buildings. It has one of the saints work its way from building to building during the hour. Then we found a small café to sit and plan out the rest of our day. All of a sudden, I realize that once again we are sitting at an attraction. The wall to our left is the old church we were trying to find. What amazing luck.



After finishing there we decided to head back to the hotel to drop off the backpack. We stopped at the store to have some munchies with us the next few days and in the room. It was getting late so we walked around and noticed a lot of police in the area. There was a lot of barricades and a lot of police. Traffic was re-routed, etc. I was wondering what was up, and a little scared. We decided to hang out and watch whatever was going to take place. (I know, I know) We found a brat stand, a couple beverages, and found a wall where we could see what was going on and escape if needed. (I make it sound worse than it was) After about 20 minutes a small parade went by, when they did about 6-10 hecklers on bikes and walking started chanting something to them in German. They continued on and the police moved the barricades after they were by. It seems, from a public safety standpoint, what you wanted to happen did. Overwhelming police presence, small group of protesters, no violence. I have no idea what was going on, and no one around spoke English…or at least said they didn’t.



It was getting pretty late, so we grabbed another beer for the road and headed for the hotel to unwind and start the day off right.

Hofburg Palace

St. Stephens Cathedral

Stephensplatz

My New Bike. Made entirely of Wood.

View from St. Stephen's Cathedral down onto the Square.