I hate overnight flights. I guess when you are travelling from North America to Europe, overnight flights are pretty much the thing. But there are (at least) two reasons they suck: 1 – There’s nothing to look at out the window, since its mostly night during the flight; and 2 – In addition to losing a nights sleep (who can sleep on airplanes, put up your hand! And I’m not including those of you rich enough to afford the nice lay-flat pods in business class) you arrive at your destination early in the morning, without a hotel ready to check-in, and you want to start you sightseeing while you are dead tired and grumpy! First world problems, I know, I know.
Well we survived the overnight flight, and the sleep-deprived first day of sightseeing. Flight was rather uneventful and took off an arrived on time (somewhat of a rarity these days). That means we arrived at Flughafen Wein before 8:30am local time. We took a local OBB train direct from the airport to Praterstern station which took about 30 minutes, and then a 10 minute walk from the station to our hotel. The hotel is located in a part of the city between the Danube river and the Danube canal, and only a short 10-15 minute walk into the old centre of Vienna. Dropped off our bags and then headed out into the city for our zombie walk.
Its super hot in Vienna, indeed most of Europe these last few weeks. We did our best to marvel at the varied gothic, Rococo, Baroque and modern architecture. Lisa had pre-booked us a boat cruise on the Danube canal for 1pm, so we hoofed the old cobbled streets, visited a park or two and sat for a coffee and water before heading over the the docks at 12:30. A fair number of tourists – many from Viking cruises wandering the streets as headphoned geriatric gangs with their gang leaders holding up locator flags while walking and reciting the history of Vienna into their wireless mics. But not jam-packed busy.
The cruise was an hour and a half cruising up the Danube canal – the man made canal branching off the main river with a primary purpose of flood control – with a Schnitzel lunch included. The cruise wasn’t really much to write home about (despite me doing so right now!) but offered up some tired travellers a chance to get off their feet, put some post-airplane food and drink in their stomachs, while watching and hearing about objects along the canal and waiting for their hotel room to be ready. For instance, did you know Vienna was the home to the world’s longest residential building (as-in, a continuous apartment block)? Neither did we, but now both we and you do! Though we couldn’t actually see it from the boat.
After the boat ride, we headed back to the hotel, where the room was ready, and we had a brief nap to restore a bit of energy. We headed out again in search of some dinner and along the way took in the amusement park at Praterstern – Prater Park. Dinner at an Italian eatery, and back to the hotel to call it a day.
Tomorrow (and Friday and Saturday) are supposed to continue hot, but I expect with a good night’s sleep we’ll be ready to tackle the tourist trek with aplomb! Pics from today below.
There don’t seem to be too many tourists. Is it busy? Are you getting in and out before the bus tours?
It has been busy, but not crazy busy. Yesterday at Belvedere was busiest we’ve seen. We’ll see how busy Slovenia is, starting today!
Oh, and I should add. My phone has a feature that will detect extra people in a picture and remove them. I use it sometimes. So it might look quieter in some pictures because of that.