Day Twenty
Vienna
27 August 2007 22:47

Since our hotel serves the breakfast earlier than our last two (they serve it 7:30 to 9:30) we got up a bit earlier than we have recently. Pretty standard continental breakfast.

Vienna does not seem to be as easy to get around as Prague, though the public transport system seems fine enough. The outer suburbs (compare to say, St Kilda) are not very picturesque and didn’t provide a great first impression. The inner city is quite nice though.

Today we saw many of Vienna’s most impressive buildings in the inner ring; many old museum buildings, universities, churches. One church we entered — the church of St Charles Borromeo — has a massive and very nice mural on the roof. Unfortunately (for us) the entire place is being restored which means there is a large scaffold in the centre of the church. However, there is an elevator you can catch to see the roof close up. At the top there was also a scaffold leading right up to the top. We both ascended but Justine went back quickly as it didn’t feel too stable.

As we decided to head back I turned and saw the Sacher Hotel. A famous cake (Sacher Torte) was invented by the owner so it’s a touristy thing to do to eat the cake there. So we did. We ordered one to share (a slice, not a cake!) and were given two. To be honest, I didn’t think it was that good, and Justine said it was “disgusting”. Justine made a Sacher Torte at school but says hers was different (more layers of cream and instead of apricot it had strawberry). Luckily for us they had only charged us for one slice so it sort of evened out.

While walking back to our hotel, we decided to try and rent bikes since they are free for the first hour after paying a registration fee. Unfortunately, my credit card wouldn’t work at all and though Justine’s worked at the final payment stage we got an “External Payment Refused” message. Weird.

Walking further we tried another bike rental machine (same company/service, but different location) with the same results. We also read just after you can only rent one bike per credit card.

It’s been really hot the past few days and today was no exception. You’d think this might mean things would be open late but supermarkets all over the city close at 7:00pm. In fact, most shops close at 7 sharp. Justine was even refused entry into one at 5 minutes to 7.

Most places in Europe run on 24-hour time also, which is different.