Vienna, Austria – Day 1

We woke up about 6:30 AM on the night train from Venice.  Our scheduled arrival time was about 8:20 AM in Vienna, or Wien as it is spelled there.  We cleaned up a little at the sink on our compartment, then got dressed into our travel clothes.  Having the sink in the compartment was nice, but the water was not drinkable.  There was no toilet in the compartment, it was a shared facility located at the end of the train car.  Our breakfast was delivered to our compartment by our attendant at about 7:30 AM, and it was not too bad, some coffee and pastries, water and fruit.  We put together our suitcases, and waited for our arrival at the Wien Westbahnhof Station.

We actually arrived a little early, and after departing the overnight train, headed down to the Underground Station underneath of the main train station to catch the U3 subway to the stop nearest to our hotel. During the night, we had changed from a Trenitalia (Italy) train engine to a OBB (Austria) train engine, and had added some cars to the end of the train.  We we departed Venice, we had been in the second to last car, and now there were at least 7-8 more cars behind ours now.  It appeared that these cars were just normal passenger cars based on the number of people who got off of them.

After purchasing our two Underground tickets, we (thankfully) took the elevator down several floors to the platform for the U3.  The stairs would have been rough with all of the luggage.  We took the U3 train to our designated stop, and got off.  Again, we were thankful that there was an elevator to take us up to the street level.  Once outside the station, and in the city,  it took us a few minutes to get out bearings.

There was a nice map of the area outside the elevator exit, we just had to look at a few surrounding street signs to help us to determine which way we needed to go to follow the directions I had written down for getting to the hotel.  It was about a 12 minute walk, pretty straightforward, and we arrived at the doorway to the building that the hotel was located in.  It is actually a Pension, which is just a simple version of a hotel, sort of like a Bed and Breakfast, but less fancy.  We rang the buzzer, but found that the door to the building was already unlocked, so we went in before anyone had a chance to reply to the buzzer.  This was our first little mistake.  Once inside the main building, we found that the building had 7 floors and no directory.  We got on the elevator and stopped at the second floor.  This was the next little mistake, as we were really on something called the “K” floor when we first got on the elevator, not the first floor, which we skipped entirely going to the second floor.  We looked around there, but did not see a doorway for the hotel, just other residences, so we went to the third floor, only to find the same, no hotel.  Stephanie went back down the stairs and that is when we realized that the hotel was on the first floor, which we had unknowingly skipped.  When we got there to check in, the receptionist told us that she had answered the ring at the outside door, and told us to go to the first floor, but we had already entered the building and missed these instructions.  Not sure why they don’t post that on their web site, nothing in any of the information I had read told us which floor the hotel was on.

Our room was not yet ready since it was only 9:30 AM, and too early for check-in.  We left our locked luggage inside the hotel and headed out to see the sights of Vienna.  We initially stopped at a church near the hotel, it was not real large, but fairly fancy inside.  It did not appear to be set up for “tourism”, there were no signs bearing any restrictions,  but we did not take any photos, not knowing if the general rule in churches in Vienna allowed non-flash photography.

We then looked over the city map and decided to go ahead and visit the large Cathedral in Vienna called St. Stephen’s.  Unfortunately, on the outside, at the front of the church, they were doing some restoration, and it was covered in scaffolding with a rendition of the covered portion painted on fabric covering most of the front of the church.  It was the same on the front, right corner of the church, it to was under repair.  We took a few photos anyway, and then went inside.

There was no fee to go into the church, but in order to access the center portion, the nave, we had to pay euro 3.50 apiece. It was worth it to get away from some of the crowd, and also to be able to get closer to the main altar.  After about an hour looking around inside, we decided to pay to climb the 343 steps in the taller bell tower.

Up and up and up we climbed,  almost all of the steps were in a small circular staircase, and it was the same staircase for going up as for going down.   It was tough to pass others heading in the opposite direction, especially with the one backpack we had.   The view at the top was good, the biggest problem being that it was an overcast day, with a chance of rain later on, not great for colorful photos.

After visiting St. Stephen’s, we just walked around that area of the city, and started to look for somewhere to eat lunch.  It was surprising to see so many coffee shops there, which only served coffee and a variety of sweets and rolls.  We never really saw a spot to get some lunch, and were already back at the hotel, so we just decided to go to our room, check it out, and ask the receptionist for a recommendation on an eatery.

The room was really large, but simple.  It was a corner room, so we have windows on two sides.  The bathroom was large, with a nice size shower.  However, we discovered that there was no shampoo or soaps supplied, so we were going to have to visit a grocery to get some.  After dropping off some of the unnecessary items from the backpack, and getting some additional warmer clothing to carry, we headed back out to get some lunch.  We went to an establishment called Toni’s, which was one of the recommendations.  We both enjoyed our lunch there, I ordered pork cordon bleu, and Stephanie ordered  pork grilled on a skewer with french fries.  Both were really good.

 

After lunch, we headed over to St. Peter’s Church, which, on the inside,  is one of the most beautiful of all the churches in Vienna.  There was a free concert going on inside, a girls choir was performing.  We listened to that for about 30 minutes, and after it ended, we took some photos and looked around.  We decided we would come back in a couple of hours and attend Saturday Vigil Mass there at 5:00 PM.  We walked around on some of the nearby streets where a lot of high end fashion stores are located, heading toward the Hofburg Palace.  We saw the famous Vienna Opera House nearby to the Palace grounds.  There are a lot of really beautiful buildings in Vienna.  When we got to the Palace, we knew we did not have enough time to really look around before we needed to start back to the church for Mass, so we just walked a different route back to the church, enjoying the city sights.

After attending Mass, we discovered that it was now raining outside, so with umbrellas in hand, we headed back to the hotel, via the grocery store.  When we arrived at the grocery, it was trying to close, but we did not realize that since it was only 6:00 PM.  We checked the hours on the sign, but were initially unaware that the week here, and hence the listing of store hours starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday, different from our normal week, starting on Monday and ending on Sunday.  This threw us off since we thought the sign indicated that the store closed early on Sunday night, not Saturday night (today).  We crossed over some baskets that had been put in front of the entry turnstile, not realizing all of that was due to the store closing, we thought they were for warning about the rain  floor being wet from the rain.  Oh well, we need a few things and they made some money.

We had decided to just eat some snacks of crackers and cheese for dinner since it was raining, and we only had eaten a late lunch at 2:00 PM that afternoon.  We were also tired from the train ride, neither of us had slept that well with the train noise and constant rocking motion, so we were going to call it a day.  The rain really intensified later, and we were glad we had not gone out, content to watch the rain from our hotel windows.

Tomorrow, we are planning to visit the Hofburg Palace grounds, if the rain does not continue as forecast.