Hello from Austria!

Thats right...I said Austria. Andrew and I are sitting in a Starbucks in Vienna drinking Frappuccinos and trying to decide what to do in this crazy city.

I can hear you thinking "Austria? Vienna? I don't remember them saying anything about going to Austria! What happened to Florence?" Andrew and I actually decided to come to Vienna about 8 AM yesterday morning.

We went to get on our train to Florence and found out that there was a railway strike in Italy and our train had been canceled and that the next train was supposed to run at 11 PM the following night, but we would have to make reservations in the train office at 8 AM Monday morning. Making a long humorous story short (we're limited on time...ask us about it when we get home and we'll be happy to share) we spent the night with 12 Koreans, got very little sleep, and were in line at the train station at 7:30 yesterday morning.

Apparently the Italy strike wasn't going to be over until 9 PM last night and the next train to Florence wasn't until 7:35 this morning. Not wanting to spend another day in Bern (there really wasn't that much to do there...) and waste today to travel from Bern to Florence, Andrew and I decided to come to Vienna. Ray is still heading to Italy, but I think he is skipping Florence. We parted ways a bit sooner than planned, but I think he'll be just fine. At least now he get to see the Pope, which he hadn't been able to do if we had gone to Florence as planned.

So Andrew and I hopped a train to Zurich and from there took a 9 hour trip to Vienna. The train was actually pretty cool. We stumbled upon a car full of 6 person private cabins (like the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter movies). We thought the were first class or reserved at first, but then some nice guy let us know they were 2nd class and open to the public. Andrew and I claimed one to ourselves and reclined the seats and essentially made one big bed and slept quite a ways. I didn't sleep as much as I'd liked because of the incredible view of the Swiss Alps. We were riding through them so there were mountains on both sides. I was incredible.

We arrived in Vienna about 11 last night. Before we left, Andrew had booked us an apartment here (it was only about 7 bucks more a night than a hostel). We found the apartment and it is amazing. It's fully furnished, has a small kitchen, a great bathroom. It's almost like we're back at the Mariott in Paris. :) It's just a really cool place and is very close to the city center and to a subway stop.

This morning we've just been roaming around the city. We had lunch in a cantina and bought tickets to an orchestra performance tonight. Apparently they will be playing Mozart and Strauss. We figured there are lots of museums and such that we could visit, but this is a different type of culture that we haven't experienced. We're both pretty excited about that. I think we are going to try to go to the Zoo or Aquarium, the Globe museum (hey, I am traveling with a Geographer!), a hedge maze, and Andrew has mentioned a few other things to me while I've been typing, but I've already forgotten about them.

Since this was a total last minute decision to come here we didn't do any research about this city so we know virtually nothing about it. I think we are going to spend our remaining internet time on Wiki Travel to find out more stuff to do. If any of our loyal readers have been to Vienna and want to give us some ideas, we'd really appreciate it!

Hugs from Vienna!