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| Glenn's Journal for 9-27-02 - Prague / Vienna We are up around 8:30 am and off and running. We shower and pack before taking off to catch the next tram to the main train station. We stopped at the grocery store to buy some thigs for lunch before jumping on the X-C tram into town. We actually arrived at the train station with plenty of time to spare. We were even surpirsed that the train was already at the platform so we loaded our things on the overhead compartment and waited on the platform until near time to leave. The train ride was uneventful and only took 4 1/2 hours so we arrived into Vienna around 3:30 pm. The countryside was beautiful whereever it was not raining. Every time we saw sunshine we were hoping that Viena would have sun itself. The newspaper projected the weather in Vienna to be more of the same including 10 degrees cooler and rain. Oh well!!! Once in Vienna we grabbed the tram from the Suedbanhoff to the Westbanhoff train station and then walked the rest of the way to our hostel. The hostel we had chosen (and had Sir Toby's call to reserve a spot for us) was Wombat's. It was recommended to us by other travellers that we had met earlier in our trip. (Travelers recommendations are usually worth taking, especially if you hear it from more than one traveler.) We checked in around 4:30 pm and dropped our stuff into a 4 bed dorm room where we met Rose. Rose was on a 3 wek tour of Europe before heading home to New Zealand. She had been working in London for the past year. After chatting with Rose we turned right around and went back into town center to casually walk around. We took the U3 (U-Bahn) to Stephensplatz and departed. Stephensplatz is located at the end of a modern shopping district with a huge church highlighting the location. After gawking at the church and it's spiers we made our way down Kartner Strasse, the center of the shopping district. There are definitely some higher end shops here along with the occasional street performer. What came into view at the other end of the district was heaven for Erin. Starbucks!! We didn't stop tonight but just knowing that there is one in town made Erin happy. By now we had made it to the "Ring" which is a street that encompasses the city center. We walked towards the palace pasing by the Staatsoper, or State Opera House, first. We were definitely ready for dinner by now so we stopped in to a local Austrian restaurant where I had some excellent wienerschnitzel and Erin had chicken Cordon Blue. We had seen a movie theater on the way to the restaurant that was playing Road to Perdition (neither one of us had seen it) in its Original Language (English). We caught the 8:45 pm movie which finished around 10:15 pm. The movie theater was quite empty and somewhat old fashoined as we sat on the balcony overlooking the movie screen. The seats were pretty good along with the movie. After the movie we continued to make our way around the "ring" towards the palace and back to the U-Bahn to return to the hostel. The palace, museums, and goernement buildings were so well lit up and the moon was peaking through the clouds that we stopped to take a few photos. It was still a little cold but the rain had stopped if only for a moment and we wanted to take advantage of it. We finally nade our way back to the U-Bahn where we returned to our hostel around 11:30 pm. |
| The Opera house in Prague. |