2004.09.22 in Vienna
We intended on doing a city walking tour early in the morning but couldn't find the meeting spot or the guide at Westbahnhof! However, this allowed us to buy some amazing, large apple strudels and sweet cheese pastries for breakfast (5 for 5+ euros). With a very useful city map from our hostel and some suggestions from the receptionist, I take over the role of tour guide. Of course I'm no history or art major and so we head first to the Hofburg (Imperial Palace) in the old town and take pictures from there. We wander around Stephensplatz admiring its shops, cafes, street buskers, and Gothic to Habsburg dynasty architecture. Besides museums and more palaces, we're wondering what else is there to see in this ancient city. I'd say we arrived here without knowing anything and our ignorance is not paying off. We felt like we could have skipped Wien altogether as it wasn't very impressive.
However, one cool aspect to our visit was eating at this restaurant/pub called "Centimeter" which had huge portions of food for reasonable prices. It's a good thing. Ate wiener schnitzel that was way better than the overpriced one we had in Berlin - this was also only under 6 euros and provided more carbs (a huge bed of fries) and a good salad. Another Poker-in-Prague inspiration was to find the same plastic playing cards used in their casino. Branded as Fournier, they're made in Spain and supposedly available in Austria (probably because of that Concord Card Casino mentioned previously). This quest was not fulfilled and we ended up buying some Austrian deck of poker cards that had B for the Jack and D for the Queen. I thought Le would have brought one of his plastic decks but we'll use this on our long train rides for practice - the plan was to go back to Prague again to finish our tour since we could shave off a few days from other cities!
Back to Wombat's City - while the hostel set up was nice, we had trouble sleeping both nights because of a really loud snorer. Some Malaysian who was taking a vacation away from his Swiss college studying produced enough bass during the night that it was more like Wombat's Club. Based on this and that superb Amsterdam experience, some advice: get ear plugs if sleeping in hostels!
Beer Rating of the Day: Hirter = 3.5 out of 5 stars
However, one cool aspect to our visit was eating at this restaurant/pub called "Centimeter" which had huge portions of food for reasonable prices. It's a good thing. Ate wiener schnitzel that was way better than the overpriced one we had in Berlin - this was also only under 6 euros and provided more carbs (a huge bed of fries) and a good salad. Another Poker-in-Prague inspiration was to find the same plastic playing cards used in their casino. Branded as Fournier, they're made in Spain and supposedly available in Austria (probably because of that Concord Card Casino mentioned previously). This quest was not fulfilled and we ended up buying some Austrian deck of poker cards that had B for the Jack and D for the Queen. I thought Le would have brought one of his plastic decks but we'll use this on our long train rides for practice - the plan was to go back to Prague again to finish our tour since we could shave off a few days from other cities!
Back to Wombat's City - while the hostel set up was nice, we had trouble sleeping both nights because of a really loud snorer. Some Malaysian who was taking a vacation away from his Swiss college studying produced enough bass during the night that it was more like Wombat's Club. Based on this and that superb Amsterdam experience, some advice: get ear plugs if sleeping in hostels!
Beer Rating of the Day: Hirter = 3.5 out of 5 stars
posted by ET at 14:51
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