Day 4 - Vienna — Wayfaring Abroad

There is a beauty and romanticism that surrounds train travel. I have enjoyed it almost every time I have had the opportunity to travel that way, at least when I am outside the US. For that very reason I decided that we need to take the train for at least one of our travel legs, this year. The past two years we have traveled by train every time we went to a new city but in deciding what to do this year we had decided to try taking the bus from city to city. The reasoning was simple, it cost 1/4 the price and would only take slightly longer to get there. But that leads us back to taking the train to Vienna this morning. It seemed that Budapest to Vienna was the appropriate leg to train as it was at the beginning and would traverse mostly countryside.

Before getting to Keleti Train Station we had to get all of our belongings packed back up and the Budapest apartment cleaned up. I awoke at around 6 am, without any chance of getting back to bed, unfortunately. I had planned on getting up at 7:40 in order to do a last ditch trip to the Grand Market and see if any of the stalls on the second floor had any hand drawn art work of the various scenes in Budapest.

Alas, the Grand Market was a complete failure. Not only did it not appear that anyone had any art, barely any of the stalls were open. It had not even occurred to me that they wouldn't be open at 8 in the morning.

Stephansplatz right at the base of St. Stephan's Cathedral.

To say the least my morning was off to a fast start. With two miles of walking already in the books and still needing to get everything out the door and onto the train station. We decided it best to grab a bagel down the street at a place called Juicy + Bägel. I got a poppy bagel with cream cheese (it came with tomato) and frankly it was phenomenal. It could have been the early morning walk, the excitement about moving on to Vienna or needing to get out of the apartment in 15 minutes but it was just what the doctor ordered.

With that fabulous Budapest Bägel in my system, we got on the way to Keleti Station. For some misguided reason I thought that the walk was only about a mile, however it turns out that it was a little under 2 miles. We got to the station platform with 10 minutes before our train was to depart. We found our car and made it into our four facing seats and settled in.

I found it quite hard as I wanted to fall asleep but I did not want to stop watching the countryside and cities that went by. After discussing a bit about what we would try to do in Vienna once we got there, I couldn't stop myself from falling asleep and took a short nap.

One of the roads by our apartment in Vienna.

One of the reason we needed to discuss Vienna, other than the obvious reason of us being there in a couple hours, was that it's forecast is for rain over the next three full days we will be in Vienna and this afternoon was the only completely clear time we would have to do anything. It was with that in mind that we tried to map out exactly what we would try to do so that we could get as much done as possible.

That meant that the second we got into our Vienna apartment and had our stuff set down that we immediately set out to see Vienna. We first made our way over to St. Stephan's Cathedral, with a stop at a hot dog stand (Würstelstand am Hohen Markt). After enjoying a Bratwurst and a Käsekrainer we made our way to St. Stephan's Cathedral where we made our way through the cathedral and up the north tower (by elevator) and then the south tower. The south tower was 340 stairs of a small winding staircase that wasn't big enough for me, let alone two people when someone decided to come down.

Looking out from the North Tower of St. Stephan's Cathedral.

Unfortunately, the top of the south tower was rather disappointing. It was merely a closed room, with 4 windows and a small store in it. Not quite worth the 300 stairs or the couple euro price tag.

The south tower of St. Stephan's Cathedral.

Once we'd weaseled our way down the stairs of the south tower we walked over to Hofburg Palace by way of a quick stop at St. Peter's Church. Once we walked through Hofburg palace (just the grounds, not inside) we meandered through the gardens, park, Maria-Theresien-Platz and over to MuseumsQuartier. From MuseumsQuartier we walked through the Volksgarten where we wound up taking 10 minutes off our feet by taking a small nap on the grass. While enjoying the serenity that Volksgarten provided a man started to play the trumpet. All in all not a bad thing to have happen when lounging in a park.

However, we were wrong when all of a sudden the trumpeter took a sharp left turn and turned on his boombox which was playing the worst accompaniment I have ever heard. The trumpeter was not dismayed though and continued to play while we lay there attempting to nap, relax and enjoy the gardens on the brisk 75 degree day.

From the Volksgarten we walked over to Parliament, then over to Rathausplatz and finally to Burgtheater which was unfortunately closed due to the national holiday. After all this walking we decided it best to get back to the apartment and determine if there was anything further to do today or to just find a good place to eat and relax a little bit. In the end we decided to walk through Sigmund-Freud Park where a small party was ragging.

After relaxing for a little and getting off our feet we decided to grab dinner so we walked along the waterfront where we were bombarded by the sheer amount of people eating gelato. It seemed as though almost every person was either in line for gelato or already had it. This went with the mass amount of Italian places that we saw during our long walk today.

In the end we had a great time going through Vienna and feel poised going forward that we will be able to see the rest in the next couple days, even with the rains that are coming.

Total walk distance: 14 miles