Palace and the city

Having made a late start and gotten to my second Airbnb host a little later than I had planned, I spent a little bit of time working out my approximate schedule for the day. I had always wanted to visit Vienna, but knew it was more about the experience here rather than seeing everything there was to see. There were a few foods I wanted to try while I was here too.

You can see the first of my Vienna photos in a Flickr set here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645485796815/

First stop was Schönbrunn, which is the main tourist attraction in Vienna. As well as the famous castle, there is a myriad gardens and flowerbeds, a Gloriette and one of the world's oldest zoos. After a U-Bahn trip to the castle, I started walking around. The weather was exceedingly average while I was there, but the whole place still looked amazing. The place was full of Americans and Asians - very few non-German-speaking Europeans.

In the park you go around the castle, through an area littered with manicured flowerbeds to the Neptune Fountain, then up a sizeable hill to the Gloriette. There were many photo stops along the way, and it was nice that I was still able to play swapsies with people taking my photo. It was nice that everyone also thought the photos I took of them were very professional-looking. Photography skills - on the improve!

I wanted to go and see the cemetery, but it was difficult to find the entrance to, so I gave it a miss. I walked past the edge of the zoo, where, could you believe it, there were more emus. Seriously, come on! I've now seen more emus in Europe than I ever have in Australia.

I had a bit of a spill walking down the hill - the dirt paths slope off deceptively on the sides. I was amazed that no-one gave a rats - they all just kept on walking even though I took a pretty good tumble - all my stuff was covered in dirt and I was bleeding a little. Maybe they didn't like the look of me. The resulting blood clot on my hand is exactly shaped like a 'J' - it's very weird.

On the way back to the exit, I stopped at a couple of extra photo points, including a couple of the gardens. Here are some of my overall favourites from the park:

 Favourites from Schönbrunn grounds

I headed into Stephansplatz directly afterwards, where I took some photos of the cathedral. It's a massive cathedral, surrounded by office buildings and shops. It was so tight I had to step into a corner and switch my lens out for the ultra-wide-angle:

The enormous cathedral at Stephansplatz

My next stop was the Stadtpark. It's one of a few parks in the centre of Vienna. It mostly felt like just another grassy area for the locals to hang out, but there was also a flower clock and a tribute to Johann Strauss:

Flower clock in Stadtpark

Afterwards I headed across to the Hofburg around sunset. More details about it later, but I did get some nice sunset photos. There was also a dancing lesson going on in the area, with lots of people dancing in formal dress. I also spied a 'free opera sitting', where there's a giant screen outside the state opera where people can sit outside and watch the performance going on inside:

Tidbits of Vienna and the Hofburg

Dinner today was a little different. I was growing tired of seeing only kebab and noodle shops, so I went with this sausage roll-type thing, except with potato instead. In hindsight, I should have considered what I would be eating over the next couple of days and eaten something more healthy, but there you go:

My unhealthy dinner

Until tomorrow everyone!