Austria - Vienna

13th November 2014

I joined another pm2am student trip to Vienna, Budapest, and Bratislava with C and Y. C and I bought a lot of snacks in the afternoon before departure to prepare for the long bus journeys :P 

We departed at about 10pm from Mannheim, passing by Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Munich before arriving in Vienna on Friday morning at 9am! I don't know why it took so long, and the bus driver kept getting the wrong directions!!

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14th November 2014

We had a guided city tour at the Maria-Theresien Platz. We followed the tour for like 5 minutes, and decided to just tour on our own, since we couldn't hear the guide at all. We mainly just walked around the Volksgarten and Heldenplatz, which were quite big and beautiful. The city was really clean and everywhere we walked, we could hear music being played by street artists on their accordions. 

We were quite amused by the MDCCCCXVI, because we thought it was a word,
 but turns out it was a roman number that represents 1916 :P

Beautiful garden :) Beautiful weather!

We casually walked around and took loads of pictures. Along the Universitätsring, we came across the Rathaus, or Town Hall. For some reason, all the town halls look similar, especially the one in Brussels. 

The Christmas market was supposed to open the next day, but some shops had already opened when we were there! Lucky :P There were so many cute shops selling Christmas decorations and food. 

I bought the strawberries for 1.80€. I loved the strawberries, but the chocolate was the cheap and not-so-sweet kind. I also bought a truffle chocolate (0.50€) and a rum chocolate (1€) later at another stall, which both tasted very good!

We had roast chicken for lunch at a random place near the McDonald's because we were craving for KFC but it was too far away! We bought a whole chicken and a big piece of roasted pork each, for only 15€ in total. Such a good meal :P

We explored further into the city and found the shopping streets! Lots of big brands that I can't afford, but still a nice place to walk around. 

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant. I had a glass of Chardonnay, a soup, and we shared a pizza. The pizza was pretty good! 

We were supposed to get back to Maria-Theresien Platz for the bus at 6.30pm, but apparently it got delayed an hour due to traffic, and everyone knew except us, probably because we didn't go for the city tour. BUT, it didn't make sense that they knew the bus was going to be delayed in the morning.. I don't think they told us the real reason, but whatever.

We headed to the Rathaus for another look before we boarded the bus to Budapest!

Vienna was great, but we were too exhausted from the bus journey to fully enjoy it. European cities are generally quite small, and most of the places of interest can be reached by foot. I think that's really nice and can save us a lot of money :P