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.