So, after leaving from Salt Lake City airport at 9:30am, I landed in Vienna around 8:45 am, local time. Thankfully I got here just fine, the aiport at DC was easy, with lots of signs telling me where to go. My seat was originally in the middle of the middle aisle (which I was dreading), but a family next to me wanted another seat for someone, so I volunteered to move. The flight attendant lady moved me up about 15 rows to the front row of seats right behind the barrier and in a window seat. So I got a ton more leg room and the window seat I wanted; it was a pretty awesome happenstance. The guy I was sitting next to was visiting his family in Tehran, Iran from Virginia where he was going to school. We became fast friends and got along really well. Another bonus: the airplane food was surprisingly not bad at all.
After I found my luggage, I got a taxi, the driver of which conveniently didn't smoke, but also didn't know a word of English. Thankfully, Alan gave me a map and the written address of the hostel which I gave to the driver and he typed it into his GPS and we were there before 9:30, awhile before everyone was expecting me.
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| This is the front of our charming hostel |
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| This is the shower - it only worked if you pushed the on button every 20 seconds, otherwise it shut itself off, like an automatic light. |
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| One small sink in our room |
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| Lori's and my bunkbeds. (I made sure to make my bed before I took the picture.... :) |
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| This was the narrowest room I've ever seen five girls fit into. |
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| This was a cool open-air courtyard in the middle of the hostel, it had a few sitting/eating places, lots of flowers, and a giant chess set. |
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That first day we met the rest of our group at the Stephensplatz
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| First day we're all together |
and walked around a bit and went to the Hofburg Palace and Sisi Museum. Mostly I remember a ton of dishes and stuff and some cool stuff about Sisi, aka Empress Elizabeth. She was pretty cool though; she was into gymnastics and horse riding acrobatics and stuff, pretty dangerous stuff for (AHHH!!! My Google is in German!! I was going to look up the correct term and other info for Empress Elizabeth, but apparently you'll have to look it up yourself...)
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| First view of St. Stephen's Cathedral, the most recognizable symbol of Vienna |
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| Sculpture dedicated to the Black Plague victims |
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| St. Peter's Church |
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| These were everywhere!! |
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Preserved section of the old original city wall
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Hofburg palace
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| Awesome ceiling |
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| Beautiful dishes |
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Glass serving tray
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Tons of gold-leaf candelabras (and the back of Lori's head)
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| Oriental-style plates |
Unfortunately, taking pictures isn't allowed in the rest of the museum, where the interesting stuff about Sisi is. There was a ton of stuff: furniture, letters, paintings, jewelry, hair-dos, dresses, etc. These guys never throw away anything....
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| This is Sisi |
So after that we walked around some more and saw a few cool things. Pretty much around every corner are cool things to see.
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| There are sculptures everywhere!! |
We went to a cute little park where you can't walk on the grass (what the heck?!), then we eventually went to eat.
So we ate at this restaurant near St. Charles Church, and I got the pork wienershcnitzel, which is a lot like chicken fried steak but crispy and without gravy. It was tender and way good. Then we got some Gelata; I played it safe and got chocolate, one of the only flavors' names I could interpret. Thankfully, German actually is pretty easy to guess the translation of (sometimes...).
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| My very first weinerschnitzel |
Since I couldn't fall asleep on the plane, I was still running since 6:30 Wednesday morning when we I was dropped off at the airport in Salt Lake, except for a little 30 minute nap on the first flight. That whole day everyone was waiting for me to crash, but I powered through until 8:30pm. I guess it's all the practice from pulling all-nighters for art projects. :)
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| Cutest sign ever! |
So we went home to our cozy hostel and I slept like a rock until 9:30 the next morning, except for a funny sleep-talking episode in which I apparently told everyone I was awake and that there were holes in the ceiling... weird. I blame that on my lack of sleep. Too bad there are no pictures to document that....not.
And that was my very first day in Vienna. It's still pretty surreal, even though I think I'm finally over my jet lag. In all, it was a pretty good first day. :)
