What is it with me and train station issues? I had so much trouble trying to figure out how to get out of the one train station in Vienna and to a different one which was next to the hostel I booked. I wandered around a bit, then managed to find an information booth. The guy there told me what line I needed to take to get there, but then after getting down there, couldn’t find a place to buy a ticket. I wandered around a bit more before finding one. In hindsight, there was a ticket booth in the area where I was, but I hadn’t realized it. Anyways…eventually I got on a tram that took me from one train station to the other.
My Vienna hostel is basically located right on top of the Westbanhof Station, on top of an IKEA. The good news is this means it is easy to get places. Unlike in Budapest, there were no hostels in the vicinity of the majority of the places I wanted to visit, so being next to a major station with trains, trams, and U-bahn (their Subway) is rather useful. So overall, there will likely be less walking in Vienna, than in Budapest. In Budapest I was averaging around 12 miles a day, while on Day 1 of Vienna, I only did 10.
After 24 hrs in my Vienna hostel I will say I’m not impressed. It has a 9.2 rating on HostelWorld, so I expected better. The beds aren’t comfortable and my pillow flattens down to nothing. The “kitchen” is a small microwave and a fridge. Most hostels have a large kitchen space with at the very least, a stove. I’m booked here for 3 nights. If I decide I need a little more time in Vienna, I might move to a different hostel. We’ll see what happens, I guess.
So on Day 5 on my Danube Extravaganza, I headed out to Schonbrunn Palace. This was the summer home for the Habsburgs from the 1700s until the death of the Austrian empire at the conclusion of WWI. Schonbrunn consists of the palace and then the palace grounds, which are now a giant park. As I saw runners jogging through the palace grounds, a part of me wondered what Empress Maria Theresa or Emperor Franz Joseph would have thought about seeing women (or men) running through their back garden in leggings and a tight fitting workout shirt.
I bought the Sisi Ticket, which got me into the Schonbrunn Palace with a Grand Audio Tour which took you room-by-room through the private apartments where Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth lived, as well as the rooms where Maria Theresa resided a century earlier, and will get me into the Hofburg Palace later. As you can expect, they were grand. The rooms had fantastic walls ranging from a very fine walnut paneled room (Franz Joseph’s receiving room) to a beautiful blue papered room with white flowers in Elisabeth’s apartments, to a room with waist-high to ceiling paneled frames with sketches done on them in blue and white to mimic porcelain (Maria Theresa’s apartments). There was a room that, while nowhere near as grand, was somewhat similar in plan to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, minus the floor to ceiling mirrors, and really just using a few mirrors along the wall to make it brighter and more open. They didn’t allow pictures inside, so I have nothing to show you in there.
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| Gloriette is situtated up on top of the hill. |
After leaving the inside portion of the palace, I wandered the palace grounds. I bet they’re absolutely lovely when there are leaves on the trees and flowers are in bloom. In some places you could see flowers starting to sprout. I’m assuming those were something like tulips or daffodils. I zigzagged my way around, looking at the fountains along the way, before heading up the hill to a place known as Gloriette. It is a building up on the hill out back of the palace. From up there you have a great view of the city. It is crazy to think that when the palace was built, it was outside of town. As I started to make my way down from Gloriette, it started to sprinkle. Really just small drops that didn’t really get you too wet. As I made my way further around the gardens on the long way back to the palace, it stopped, so I took a seat for a little while and just enjoyed being there. In nearly 2 hours, I wandered around 3.65 miles around the gardens (I wanted a GPS map of my wanderings…it’s as fun as I expected). If I wasn’t worried about more rain coming (which I could see was on its way), I would have done some more ins and outs around the grounds.
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| The Palm House on the Schonbrunn grounds. It has 3 zones inside for plants from different climates. |
But since I knew rain was coming and heading down to the Belvedere or Stadtpark seemed like poor decisions, since they would involve a lot of walking around outside, I headed in to Karlskirche, or St. Charles Church. It was a unique church with two large pillars sticking straight up from the building that were elaborately carved from top to bottom with scenes. Unlike many Catholic churches, this church didn’t have a cross shape really, when looking at the worship space. I was more oval instead. My favorite part of the church, besides the tall pillars outside, was the large oval dome. You see a lot of round domes, but not a lot of oval domes. And it had frescos painted all over it, so high up that the painter certainly couldn’t have any fear of heights.
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| Part of one of the pillars on Karlskirche. |
When I came out of the church it was raining again, but a bit harder this time. My feet were hurting and as it was nearing 4, I decided it seemed like a good time to be done for the day. I headed back to the hostel, bought a frozen dinner, and then ate an early supper. I’m hoping for an early bedtime tonight because I didn’t sleep well last night. And I’m thinking tomorrow night, supper might just be something from the food court in the train station next door since I can’t exactly make something for myself. I’ll try to avoid the McDonald’s; we’ll see if I can find anything more Austrian there instead. Since I didn’t do a ton of wandering around besides at the palace, I didn’t find any Austrian sweets to try today. They don’t do chimney cakes, but maybe I can find something else delicious. I’ve seen signs for strudel.
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