From Vienna to Venice (may 18|19)

From Vienna we flew to Venice getting in to the airport around 8 PM. However it was after 11 when we were through bussing, water bussing, and finding our hotel after lugging our bags back and forth over big pedestrian bridges that cross the canals. We were happy to check into our hotel room and go for a very late supper. This was the first delicious meal in Italy and everything since has continued on that trend.

The next day we got up and took a water taxi out to the nearby island of Murano to watch a glass blowing demonstration. The taxi ride made us feel very glamorous, going through canals in the sunshine. We were to take the water bus back to Venice but ended up stuck waiting for quite a while. Venice was hosting a leg of the Americas Cup which resulted in numerous water bus lines being closed for the races. Unfortunately, there was nothing saying that the lines were closed (even the scrolling schedules still listed the departure times) so we ended waiting for a bus that wasn't going to arrive for some tie before deciding to hop the next available bus and walk from where ever it let us off.

On the bright side, it gave us a reason to wander the streets of Venice and pick up a souvenir or two.

We only had the one day in Venice so the next morning we got up, repacked again, and headed for the water bus. Having some extra time, we decided to catch the bus that takes the longer route down the grand canal. Of course, this was one of the lines that was affected by the 4 man gondola races that morning so we were stuck in a growing crowd of people all wondering where the water bus was and how badly it was going to be delayed. We were a little nervous as the delay grew, but ended up with about 20 minutes to spare (plenty of time for a train) and got to see a part of one of the races.

On to Vienna (May 15|16|17)

We took a short train from Cannes to Nice and then hoped a plane to Vienna. When we got to the hotel, we found it was a little more out of the way than the previous hotels which were all perfectly just outside of the best parts of the cities, but didn't mind too much since the hotel was so cool and Vienna has a fantastic public transit system (better than anything we've seen) that got us where ever we wanted to go easily and quickly. Alaina was a little stressed at being in a less touristy area where there was little to no English. A nice meal and a dunkle beer or two later she was feeling much better.

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The next day we made use of the transit system to get downtown to do some wandering before hoping on a hop on hop off tour bus to see a good part of Vienna. The spot that really caught Alaina's attention was vermin beach of the Dengue island which is a popular spot in the summer and has a swim disco.

We had a simple lunch with more dunkle beer, then made our way to one of the many museums in Vienna. We were getting a little tired of getting rained on (did we mention it was raining again - seems to be a running theme) so we picked the first museum we found. It was dedicated to old weapons (armour, hand weaponry, and really early riffels and pistols) and to old musical instruments. It was a huge collection and took a couple hours to get through.

We had booked a dinner and show for that evening so we took a collection of subway, rail, and bus lines to the opposite end of Vienna in about 45 minutes. We had a fantastic traditional meal to live music followed by more music with some singers and dancers. It made for a fantastic evening.

We actually got some nice weather for a change so we headed out to see more of Vienna. With so many different types of museums and areas to pick from, we decided to visit - the zoo...

It was actually a really nice, and very large zoo and was situated in a corner of the grounds of one of the main Viennese palaces. The size of the walled grounds was quite amazing. At least as big as Wascana Park (including the University, and Douglas park areas). The other nice part about the zoo was that it was near where we had booked tickets to a Mozart/Strauss concert. We found a great little restaurant near the concert venue for a fantastic meal - including more beer, served in traditional ceramic mugs, before heading to the concert.