My Viennese Whirl(wind visit) part 1

So Vienna. You're going to get this post in two halves. The reason being that I wrote this on Sunday, then added in the photos, of which there were many, and then I discovered that blogger has a limit on a post size so it deleted half of the post! That was mightily annoying and it's taken me until now to get round to rewriting. To show you everything I want to I decided to do Vienna: parts 1 and 2.

My word this place is pretty. It's almost a bit too much, some of it should have been shared with other cities  - although maybe all Austrian cities are this pretty! I came up from Bratislava on the RegioJet Bus which cost only €5 and included free tea and coffee and a newspaper (which of course I was unable to take advantage of) so I reckon between these you could have recouped the cost of the trip! It was only an hour and a half bus journey, again super simple border crossing (which having done bus border crossings a number of times previously I was expecting this).

In Vienna I stayed in a Wombats hostel. This is the first chain hostel I've done on this trip so far and whilst they have great facilities, including a fab all-you-can-eat breakfast for €4.50, they are a little lacking in atmosphere due mainly to their size. I was pretty happy there though, had nice people in the room on the first night, but then non-chatters the remaining nights. I had worried for the people in my hostel tonight with fear that I may have verbal diarrhoea but this hostel has fab free computers so I took the opportunity to back up my pictures which is always a worry on this type of trip. I'm not a fan of files in only one location.
Anyway, back to Vienna! On my first night there I decided to see if could get a ticket for the Vienna State Opera. On the four nights I was there, La Boheme, Don Giovanni and Der Spieler were on - the last one for two nights. The former two were sold out and the night I arrived (when it was the premiere) Der Spieler was the only performance to have a ticket on sale I could afford. It was advertised as restricted view (which is why I could afford it!), but Cathy and I do restricted view loads and it's always been fine, you maybe can't see a bit of the stage or have an overhang from the balcony but you don't miss much. However, it turns out that restricted view means different things to different venues...  'Restricted view' in Vienna State Opera means 'no view'!! If the woman in front of me really tilted her head to the side I could see about 1 square foot of stage that had a fixed prop, but otherwise, I could see precisely nothing! So it was like listening to foreign language radio but with a screen with subtitles! When we (eventually) reached the end and the ovation took place, I stood up and leaned forward so that I could see the stage and the costumes looked amazing so I'm sure it could have been fantastic if only I'd been able to see anything! Some photos of the Vienna State Opera below which show it wasn't a completely wasted trip!

The next day I went for a walk around Vienna in the morning and took in the sights. I'm not going to name them all (mainly as I can't remember all of them, but you can have a selection of them here...

Then at midday I went to the cathedral for mass. You'll probably know that I'm not catholic, but Mary was and 11am Thursday (midday for me) was Mary's funeral mass. I'd really wrestled with whether or not to come back for her funeral but various conversations, including one with her sister, had persuaded me not to so I said my personal farewell to Mary in the most stunning setting.

That afternoon, being in Austria, I felt it was my moral imperative to have a piece of Sachertorte...

(One for you Jim...)
Friday's excursion involved the Prater for my obligatory ride on the Wiener Riesenrad, the Ferris wheel.

Then I went on the Lilliput Train around the Prater Park... 

(yes I did feel foolish being the oldest person on there without a child to legitimise me!). It was absolutely freezing and quite rainy on Friday and so in the afternoon I decided to take myself off to the Albertina. They had a Rafael exhibition on which was simply stunning. Also on display was a Monet and Picasso and Bruegel exhibition. 

Joanne, I took this for you xx

There was also an opportunity to visit some of the State Rooms but typically I had managed to go on a day when there was a private function and some were closed. 

On my way back to the hostel, via the Museum Quarter, I discovered that on the Saturday night, it was going to be the Long Night at the Museum Festival. For one night a year, the museums open until 1am and you can enter 129 different museums for the bargain price of €15. Yep €15 total, and that includes your travel too. Thinking this was too good a bargain to miss, I snapped up a ticket and that evening planned which museums I would go to. I decided I could either do by location or area of interest and as the former made more sense, that's what I went with.

Check out My Viennese Whirl(wind visit) part 2 to find out where I went!!