Vienna, Austria

Hey everyone - We ended up taking an earlier train than expected to Vienna, which means that we are now here safely. It seems like a really nice city and we're about to start exploring. Tomorrow night at midnight we're taking a train to Munich and get in at 7 am on the 11th. We're having a lot of fun and can't wait to see everyone again! Talk to you soon!

~ Mike

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We woke up at 8:45 to catch an earlier train to Vienna.  We ate some breakfast at our hostel and made our way to the train station to catch an 11:10 train.  We arrived in Vienna at 2:25 and walked to the Wombat Hostel, which was only about 3 minutes from the train station.  We were lucky enough to get bumped up to a 4-bed room for the price of our 6-bed, which was a nice way to start this city off.  We chilled for a few, showered, and then went out for coffee at the Westbahnhof Cafe.  We got traditional Viennese melange which was excellent.  Vienna really does have some amazing coffee as long as you like it strong, but we are already realizing how expensive this city is.

We went to dinner at Mozart Strausse and got some Wiener schnitzel, which was awesome, although not exactly what we expected.  We were exhausted from traveling since it kept catching up with us, so we decided to go back to the hostel and relax in the bar for a bit before going to bed early.

We woke up the next day at 9 and checked out of the hostel and stored our backpacks.  We

walked to see Vienna Palace which was massive, 

and then over to St. Steven's Church.  The church had mass from 12:00 to 1:30, so we left and went to Karl's Church and a really cool open air market.  The open air market was awesome and had some amazing food for us to sample.  We walked back up to St. Steven's Church which was absolutely beautiful.  It was first built in 1147 AD and has been under some form of construction ever since.  We decided that we wanted to see the view, so we climbed to the top of the tower which gave us some great views of the city.

After leaving the church we decided to walk over 

to the Haus der Muzik.  The museum was awesome, and was everything there is to know about the history of music.  It was very interactive with the opportunity to "conduct" your own orchestra, see original pianos from Mozart and Strauss, and a room that mimicked the sounds of what it is like to be in the womb (not as fun as you would think).  There were also rooms that explained how sound works, how we hear it, and how music has developed over the years.  This was definitely a must-see and I recommend it to anyone who likes music at all.

We walked back and ate some dinner at a really good middle-eastern restaurant before going to a bar to chill until our 12:09 overnight train to Munich.  We had to take a train from a random station far from where we were to save money, but the train was on time and we didn't have any problems.  Although we all liked Vienna, it ended up being a very expensive city.  

See more of my photos from Vienna here.