Vienna

This morning, I woke up in time for the walking tour. There were about ten of us from the hostel in the group. Our guide was a woman named Katerina (not sure about the spelling). She took us from the hostel, through the Naschmarkt (an extensive outdoor market area), and towards the city centre. Along the way, she pointed out a variety of the shops along the market including various restaurants, wineries, and beer houses.

Then we headed towards the city centre and she pointed out even more interesting sights.

Towards the end of the tour, she showed us an area where they train horses for shows. This institution has been training horses there for over 450 years. She also pointed out two places which claimed to have the original recipe for some special Viennese cake. The claim of who could claim the original cake had to be decided by the supreme court of Austria. In another area, they have left an excavated area where the foundations of buildings dating back to the Roman era were visible.

After the tour, a group of six of us continue together to walk to St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It as a very spectacular Gothic style cathedral.

Then, we all walked to a pub for lunch. I had a delicious (and altogether too big) dish of chicken, mushrooms, and spätzle covered with melted cheese.

The restaurant had a very cool atmosphere.

After that, we went off in different directions. I walked through the city towards the Danube. It became more of a modern city that direction, so after I crossed the spur that Vienna is situated on, I headed back to the hostel.

It was mid-afternoon by then, and so I decided to go back to the hostel and took a nap. I intended for it to be an hour nap, but three hours later I woke up. I went to the hostel bar and met some of the people from the walking tour. We had a few drinks and chatted, and I worked a bit on my blog posts.

A few people are going to meet up to take the train tomorrow morning to Bratislava, and since I was already thinking that might be a fun day-trip, I decided to join their plans.