A True Austrian Experience 7/19/08

Wallet: Day 13

First actually nice day of the trip! Shorts and T-Shirt!

This morning stared of spectacularly. The sun was shinning through the window and a warm breeze accompanied it - great way to start the day, to say the least. I felt completely refreshed even though I had slept barely 5 hours. We checked out of the Wombat and headed to the subway to get to Meli’s house. Meli picked us up after a little confusion on where to meet, in a sweet Mercedes. Both Loyd and I have been amazed by the cars that people drive in Europe, we have regularly seen Taxis that would cost around $80,000 + in the States.

Once we arrived at her parents house we were served an amazing breakfast of meats and cheeses. Delicious. I overate and ended up needing a powernap so I laid down. Around 1 we all got up and got moving into the city center. On the way we stopped at Zendral Friedhof – the largest cemetery in Europe. While we were walking around we spotted a few famous graves like Beethoven and Mozart. The place was absolutely massive, with over 1.5 million square meters of graves.

We got back on the tram and rode it all the way to central Vienna. We made our way to go see the Belvedere museum. On the way, we stopped by a grocery store to pick up some lunch and some beers. As soon as we walked in I spotted it, the most amazing thing I have seen yet – an orange juice maker. I rushed over to it and put some fresh oranges into it and turned the thing on. Loyd videotaped the commotion, I was like a kid in a candy store. The one thing I wanted when I was feeling sick was a glass of fresh OJ. I finally had it. We picked up some Mozart chocolates and other food for the day.

As we walked up to the Belvedere, we stopped to take one of our classic jumping pictures. About 5 tries later, we figured out we should try to use our burst shooting modes since, we kept jumping at the wrong moment. I used two large beer cans a stand and we finally had our picture. It came out amazing.

Once we finally made it into the museum there was a Gustav Klimt exhibit on display. I was excited to see it until we saw the museum closed 30 minutes later. There was no way we could justify 12 Euros on a museum we spend so little time inside. We decided to walk around the museum’s outside and take some more pictures. The grounds were impeccable.

After relaxing a bit in the shade we walked down to the City Hall, where we were the previous evening. We ate an authentic Austrian dinner of a Melonenbowle, Eirschwammer sause with Semmelknodel, Paprikahuhn mit Nockerln and Altwiner Reifsleisch. I know none of that is in English but I got Meli to write down the names since they were all so delicious.

We watched the beginning of an Opera they were showing at that evening and soaked up the incredible evening. What a classy place Vienna is, it just oozes with sophistication. I really loved the time we spent here. We had an early night and were all asleep by 1, we are planning on heading to Budapest tomorrow. So from Vienna, Au Revior!