Vienna

Today we spent the day in Vienna. It was unusually cold & windy today, but never did rain. The staff dropped us off at the IKEA Mall and we started off by going to the Interspar store. Interspar is one of the larger grocery stores in Austria. We bought lots of chocolate and some coffee. In order to get a grocery cart you have to put in a Euro coin and then when you return the cart, you get the Euro coin returned. They have a bus that leaves the IKEA Mall and goes straight to the opera house, which is what we took. Since this area by the opera house has such a large street crossing, you have to go underneath the street to cross it.

At the opera house they have tours in different languages and fortunately we caught the English tour just before it started. The opera house is like what we've seen in movies. They said there was a fire in the opera house so they had to rebuild the inner part of the opera house so it's not quite as magnificant like it once was, but it is more high tech. The most expensive ticket to see the opera is 178 Euros. They were setting up for a performance this evening while were there. They take you to the back of the stage so you can see behind the scenes.

We then headed down through the city and convinced our team leader, Debra to stop and eat. In Vienna they have several vendor stands and we got bratwurst. I'm not sure what happened, but Debra, Lisa, Faye & Diane all got bratwurst in a nice white bun. When Jeff & I ordered 'white' bread, we got brown bread and sliced bratwurst. Oh well... it was very good. More like spicy sausage then the bratwurst we've had. They have the street performers and one of them would simply move his head every once in a while. We decided that was going to be Faye's new man and take her picture, but she wouldn't do it. She let him get a way...

We found our way through the soccer fans and crowded streets to the St Stephens Cathedral. It was beautiful inside. It appears to be an active church as they had brochures showing service times for mass. They have a tour you can take to the top, but we didn't get a chance to do it.

Our transportation leader, Jeff, figured out the U-bahn system and we took it to our next stop. We did pretty well until the last train, we waited for the door to open and it never did. Thus, we went to the next stop and it didn't open so Debra manually opened it. I think it was stuck. It didn't take us to far past where we wanted and we did wind up near a 'futbol' fan zone. We wanted to see the Ephesos Collection at the Heldenplatz, but only got to see the outside of the building. We had to return to the bus by this point.

The buildings in Vienna are very beautiful and the architecture detail is a marvel. It will be nice to see more of it later in our trip when we do the Schombrunn Palace.

Jeff took about 130 pictures while we were in Vienna today. They look like they turned out really well too, lots of detail and very clear.