April 14 - Moving On To Vienna

Up and at ‘em and the same old breakfast. Today was the Vienna City bus tour. It was cold and rainy at 8:15 when we boarded. I was layered in long underwear, jeans, long sleeve shirt, sweater, fleece jacket and rain jacket. I was plenty warm but it was a hassle taking a lot of it off when I got on and off the bus. We saw the Karlskirche, opera house, Houses of Parliament, town hall, Votiv Church, Hundertwasser House, St Stephens Cathedral and the riding stables of the Lippenzaner stallions. The Hundertwasser House was really colorful and unique and is currently an apartment building. It reminded me of something Gaudi would have designed. They really kept us moving on the tour and gave us a rapid bathroom stop and a few minutes to look in the shops at the Hundertwasser stop. At the stables we got lucky and they were bringing the horses back in from their morning exercise so we got some pictures too. After St. Stephens they turned us loose with the option to go back to the ship. We left the group and headed to a café for some hot beverage and to map out our day. It was still rainy and cold and the hot drink helped motivate us to move on.

First stop was the Hapsburg Palace to see the Imperial Treasury,but once we got there we realized we had been there before. We went in St Michaels Church but Kerry thought we’d been there also. So we hit the stores and walked our tired little puppies to death. In addition to regular shopping we hit 2 grocery stores. We were in search of Dill Krauter and Mebmer tea and were excited to find the dill krauter but struck out on the tea. We lunched in a bakery and at the end of our trail we stood outside a wifi bar and checked email. The place was too full of smoke to do it inside. Then we made our way to the U-bahn to get back to the ship. We were somewhat misinformed on directions and had to do a lot of walking to do to get back on track and we knew we were cutting it close to be back on board for dinner. In addition to being late we were so tired when we got back and had walked miles even with catching the Dtram and the U-bahn more than once. Dinner was into the dessert course when we arrived and the maitre’d refused to serve us anything but dessert and there were some leftover salads. He claimed they had thrown out all the leftover food, which we know was not true as the staff gets to eat what the passengers do not chose for their dinner. Well, we caved, but went out to work on the Amadeus puzzle and told the cruise director what had happened and she was not happy. She said she’d speak to him immediately and had them bring us a cup of tea since they didn’t even ask if we’d like our after dinner beverage.

We only lasted til 9 as it was a long day, but we had a good time!