WEIN Abenteuer

I arrived in Vienna, or Wein, around 9 AM on the 26th, where Reagan graciously met me at the train station so I wouldn't get lost. :] We got to her apartment and after chatting a bit, I took a quick shower to wash off my 12 hour train ride grime. We left to have a brunch with a few of her friends, Brad and Grady, 2 of her good friends from this semester, and Laura, Grady's friend from home who was also visiting. After lunch we were all pretty tired.. I had lack of sleep from the train ride and they had a lack of sleep from going out the night before. We were considering taking a nap before finding something to do, but we decided to first wander around this festival in Vienna, which happened to be its last day running. They didn't expect much to be going on (Sundays in Europe are basically shut down and nothing happens). However, we ran into many surprises on the grounds of that festival. Not only did I get to ride a mechanical bull (for free!) fort he first time, but I also got to zipline for the first time (also for free!)

How fun to be in Vienna!? (Shown above is me and Reagan) We continued to walk around finding other free goodies -- gum, milka chocolate, balloons, some weird berry beer. We ended our festival adventure, finding ourselves with about 12 balloons between all of us... Kids at heart?

We came back to Reagan's apartment around 5 PM and she was exhausted from only sleeping for about 2 hours the night before ((Thanks for picking me up early at the train station!!) She needed to get started on a paper and also take a siesta, so I went around town with her friend Grady's friend, Laua. We found our way to the "Top 10 Places to Go in Vienna" according to her Lonely Planet guide. We foundt he Parliament building, the History Museum, a few churches, the Rathaus and the oldest ferris wheel in the world. Also, we found one of Mozart's old apartment buildings! Here are a few pictures from wandering around Wein with Laura, finding the top 10 attractions in Vienna:

^^Some recovered original sheet music of Mozart's... No big deal.

My feet took some wearing again this day, wearing some unfortunate sandals that won't make it the entire summer. :P We headed back to Reagan's friend's apartment where we cooked a nice pasta dinner and sat and chatted. On Monday, the 27th, Laura and I took the metra to find a local brewery tour. After getting lost on the way and finally finding it, we found out that there were in fact, no brewery tours happening that day. Here is a picture of the sign, just because we trekked all the way there. :P

It was already 2 PM at this point, so we decided to go ahead and go to this public pool that we had planned on going to. MOST AMAZING VIEW of the ENTIRE city of Vienna. Again, pictures don't do it justice.

We got back to the city and stopped at this bar to have 50 euro cent drinks! We had a power hour and then came back, showered and got ready and cooked dinner again. (Reagan and her classmates were trying to get rid of groceries, so it was nice to not have to go out to eat all of the time.) We had planned to go out, but we were pretty exhausted from the intake of sun, so we crashed early.

I was up early the next day, Tuesday, the 27th to a catch a train with Laura and Brad (Reagan and Grady had finals stuff to deal with... Brad was already finished!) the 3 of us took a train to Melk, Austria to start a 40km bike ride through the countryside of Austria. As you can imagine, I'm in the BEST shape to be riding an equivalent of 25 miles on a bike, but boy, was it worth it. The scenery was absolutely unreal. In Melk, the town where we started, there is a monastery overlooking the town:

We biked up the hill and took a short gander through the monastery:

And then we were on our way. Here is the view of where we started out:

The trail worked like, we'd bike through the streets of little cute towns like this:

And then we'd proceed through rural areas covered with hills, vineyards, etc.

And then we'd go back through another town and so on and so forth. Each town was filled with little family owned wineries/restaurants, where you essentially are eating on the porch of their houses. We stopped a few hours in for a traditional Austrian lunch: white wine spritzers, meat and bread:

Brad and MEAT.

After a nice break, we were back to finish the 2nd leg of the bike ride. Here are some more images:

People have stands selling their apricots and grapes all along the biking path. Brad stopped for a half kilo of fresh apricots. NOM.

When we were almost finished with the bike ride, we had hiked to the top of this:

Here I am at the top... I didn't take many pictures up here... I was too busy almost dying from hiking that long, steep, uneven terrain. :P

We finally got back to Vienna and had plans to go out, but we were again too exhausted. Getting old!? It was fine though because I had homework to do for my online class, I blogged about the rest of my previous Germany visit and then packed my belongings to prepare to leave Vienna mid-day the next day to catch my flight to ROMAAA. And heeeere I am! :D

Xoxo

Paige