A weekend in...Vienna

I had my FIRST visitor in Amsterdam! Kristin bought her ticket before I even got to Amsterdam - as she said, "I've been very carpe diem lately". She flew in on Wednesday morning on the same flight my mom and I took, direct from Philly. However, unlike my mom and I, Kristin had HOURS of tarmac delays...and I spent a few hours pacing around the airport. 

Given the lateness of the flight and the fact that I still had to go to work, I intended to send her off with directions on which bus stop to get off at and a map to get to the apartment. While we were on the bus from the airport, I drew what is probably the world's worst map...I've saved it, so you can see how terrible it is when you come to visit. Fortunately for Kristin, the bus route was different than I expected, so I walked home with her and then biked to the office. I asked her when I got home, would you have made it and she solemnly shook her head, "No, not a chance". If you come to visit, I promise I will provide a better map...or save yourself the trouble and fly in when Wes or I can meet you at the airport.

Kristin had a mission while she was here, she was determined to see as much of Amsterdam as possible before we left for Vienna on Thursday night. I biked off to work (in the rain no less, I learned to bike while holding an umbrella that day) and she set off to see the city. We met back at the apartment for dinner at an Indonesian restaurant, one that my mom and I found on one of our first days in the city. On a side note, this day, Wednesday June 15, was my mom's birthday and I forgot about it...SORRY MOM!!

Thursday was a blur as we both got up early, me to go to work and Kristin to get in one more day of sightseeing...I came back to the apartment around 5ish. With our flight to Vienna being at 8pm, we probably should have left around 5:30, but it ended up being closer to 6pm and we were at the airport closer to 7pm. Considering we weren't checking a bag, that security was light and the flight was delayed, we ended up being just fine, but I think next time I won't cut it that close! I thought this guy was kind of amusing, he was just chilling right under the jetway.

The flight to Vienna was about an hour and a half, and when we landed it was already full dark, which is completely odd for me because in Amsterdam it doesn't get dark until about 22.30 (10:30pm for you non-Europeans). We took a cab to our hotel, the Hilton Vienna. Kristin has only recently downgraded from the highest level of Hilton precious metal status, so of course we were in the executive floor with access to the executive lounge. Let me tell you, access to the executive lounge = clutch. Awesome breakfast and free drinks + snacks all day long. 

We woke up the next morning and realized we had no plans for the next three days...for two accountants not having a plan is a serious problem. So after we oohed and aahed over our view, we got ourselves some awesome breakfast (executive lounge, baby!) and got down to business.  Our plan for Friday started with the Kunsthistorische (Art History) Museum. We wandered our way from the hotel to the center of the city, where the museum is situated. We walked around Stadtpark, which was right next to the hotel (In fact the street address of our hotel was Am Stadtpark, which if you know German means "on Stadtpark".) On the way, we walked through Hofburg, which was the winter home of the Austrian imperial family, the Hapsburg dynasty.

 Vienna has many amazingly detailed copper statues. The oxidization is beautiful However, as you can see in these two shots, as we walked by there was a couple "enjoying" the monument. Like a few seconds before the shot on the right, she had her leg straight up in the air...it was a bit unreal...

The shots that I was able to take around them were less uncomfortable and quite a bit prettier....

 

 

The building housing the Kunsthistorische Museum sits across from an identical building which has the Naturhistorisches Museum. The buildings, along with the Austrian National Library, are magnificent, incredibly grand and imposing. They were commissioned Emperor Franz Joseph I and opened in 1891. The two museums were commissioned in order to find a place for the Habsburgs' art collection and to make the collection accessible to the general public. This museum had the most ornate decorations I have ever seen. Like the lobby was a work of art before you even got to the art itself. Leave it to an emperor to have the entry to their museum look like this -

 

We spent hours wandering in the museum. It was organized into rooms, connected by hallways. We didn't see 30% of it, which is a shame.

This room was my favorite. I loved the organized chaos of it. I hope at the end of these two years, if I can fill a room (or a wall) in my house with pictures I've taken, that I can make it look like this.

Kristin did a happy dance (literally) when she realized that this was a Caravaggio, which is her favorite painter. Earlier in the day, she had mentioned hoping to see something by him or in that Italian school. When we walked into this room, she immediately identified this painting as having the same characteristics...shocking when it turned out to be exactly what she thought it was.

 After severe hunger dragged us out of the museum, we found the Visitors Bureau and bought our Vienna Cards, which entitled us to free public transport and discounts for 72 hours. We also bought tickets to hear the Vienna Boy's Choir! Vienna is the capital of classical music and the Boy's Choir was established in July of 1498. As I mentioned before, the severe hunger drove us to have lunch at Cafe Mozart, which was right next to the visitors bureau. We both thought we were in for a tourist trap and were pleasantly surprised! Kristin is as much of a aspiring food photographer as I am, so our meals all began with a camera. Forget about the meals, for us Vienna was all about the desserts. We asked our waiter which we should start with and without hesitation, he pointed us towards the Sachertorte. It lasted about one minute...may be two.

 

 

After the dessert, we decided that we wanted to see the Danube. We were a bit too far away to go to the river, so we plotted a path past St. Stephen's towards the Danube Canal. St. Stephen's is the seat of the Archbishop of Vienna. The canal had some really funny "beach" bars, complete with sand and tiki huts and beach loungers. There was also some great street art (graffiti). Look a picture of me! But only because the graffiti looked like it said Abi.

 

St. Stephen's was under construction, but what was really amusing about that, was the scaffolding. Whatever coverings the government had put on it, was a picture of the cathedral, so you could only after looking for a minute tell that it was scaffolding.

Inside the cathedral, was more amazing than I could have imagined. You can't tell from the outside, but the stained glass doesn't have patterns, just colors. And inside the colors mix in the ethereal fashion to give the ceiling of the cathedral an unparalleled look.

After the church, we found one of the city's many concert cafes, Cafe Schwarzenberg, for a coffee and another dessert. Yes, I had a coffee...I was in Vienna, I had to...can't say that I'll have another one again for a long time, but it did offset the sweets really well. The sachertorte we had earlier in the day was the #1 Viennese dessert in Kristin's guidebook, so we had #2 (the Gugelhupf, first picture and my overall favorite dessert) and #4 (the Esterhazy) with our coffee. Both were excellent, however the Esterhazy was on the really sweet side!

And that was just Friday! Saturday and Sunday's adventures to come soon...

Random Pictures...strawberries

This year the strawberries have been ready early, so there are lots of them everywhere. That combined with the fact that yogurt here is amazing and you have my breakfast nearly everyday of the week.  I have substituted other fruit but the strawberries are by far the best. A few weeks ago, I decided that my breakfast looked really pretty and here's the best of the pictures that I took.

A weekend in...London

On May 20th, Operation Travel Europe officially began. Of course, I probably won't do much before Wes gets here, but I can't waste all of the time I have sitting in the apartment watching the free movie channels. It begins with London. My friend Lindsey, who also worked at PwC in Raleigh, left for her tour in London a few months before I landed in Amsterdam and even before I left the US, I had booked my flight to go visit her.


 







Friday
On the recommendation of Mike, a friend from UNC and who is also at PwC in London, I flew into London City Airport (Location), which is much closer to the city than the other airports. We went straight from the airport to dinner, which was at restaurant called inamo. Tip for people riding the Tube in London, know where you're going. I had at least one angry comment voiced as I tried to maneuver myself and my suitcase to the right place. Better idea - when going to London, just travel with a backpack, but outside of the Tube the suitcase was less awkward than I imagined it would be.

After about an hour of public transportation during rush hour - we definitely let one train go past when we saw how crowded it was - Lindsey and I arrived at the Tottenham Court Tube station and wandered around for a bit until we found the place (did you honestly think that I wouldn't get lost in London? ha). The restaurant was upstairs and the bar in the basement. The bar was cozy (ie dark and small) but it was great to catch up for a while. Lindsey's husband Justin, and Mike and his fianceé Deana joined us for dinner. Inamo is an  "interactive" restaurant, which means that you use a computer with the mouse built into the table to view the menu, order your meal, change the "ambiance" - the picture projected onto your table, play games - Mike and Justin enjoyed a round of Battleship, and even to ask for the check. The food is served tapas style and everything was quite good. One thing to remember - everytime you hit a button, you place an order, Deana almost ordered 5 glasses of wine. Fortunately the restaurant is staffed with very nice waiters and waitresses, who just made that order into the whole bottle. We finished the evening over frozen yogurt and a pint.


Saturday
I'm incredibly tempted to say that the best part of Saturday was my hot shower in the morning, but that would be a total lie. However at that point, I had been without hot water for about 3 weeks so the shower was pretty amazing. Almost as amazing as the shower after the Inca trail, except I'm 100% sure I needed that shower in Peru much more than I need the shower in London.

Lindsey and I started the morning by visiting the park near her house...and Starbucks! Londoners LOVE their Starbucks. There were multiple places in the city where you could stand at one Starbucks and look at another one...

Then we found half-price tickets to "We Will Rock You" online and planned our day out so that we ended up at the theater at 6:30.  We took the Tube from Lindsey's place to the Tower of London and then started our walk around London at Tower Bridge.

Tower Bridge got its name from it's proximity to the Tower of London. It's just steps away from it. For those of you that thought that this one was London Bridge, you're wrong. London bridge is not attractive at tall. As Justin said "Why bother making it pretty when it's just going to fall down again?" Well, I thought it was funny..

The process for designing the bridge was done by committee. The committee began accepting designs in 1876 but the final design, submitted by Sir Horace Jones, the City Architect was approved in 1884. Jones was also apparently one of the judges on the selection committee. A traditional fixed bridge couldn't be built in this spot because of the need for tall-masted ships to access the port facilities. The bridge was opened in 1894. The Victorian Gothic styling of the bridge was not in the original plans, those were a late addition to the bridge. I think that's what appeals to me most about the bridge actually. I thought this window was really interesting, probably because of the ornate features combined with the broken panes.

Last time I was in London, there was loads of traffic because the bridge was actually opened, no such luck this time but we did walk across the bridge. The bridge's colors were changed from a chocolate brown in 1977 to the red, white and blue for the Queen's Silver Jubilee. In that paint was stripped down to bare metal and repainting in the current (electric) blue and white.

From across Tower bridge You can see quite a bit of the London skyline, including the pointy building next to Justin, which is known as the the Gherkin, Bullet or the Cucumber Building. The building's known for being built with sustainability at the forefront.  From here, we visited the newest PwC office in London (which looks awesome!) and continued down the Queens Walk, which follows the Thames through South Bank.

As we were walking we saw a sand artist, relaxing after creating the butterfly to his right. We continued walking, stopping at a fun open air market for lunch, where Lindsey and I shared a Ghanian lunch of rice with peanut chicken and spinach with mushrooms. It was excellent! Also, I discovered that Whole Foods sells amazing pesto...I almost bought some...but I didn't want to check my bag on the way home and it was 6GBP, that's a lot for pesto. =)

On the way we got some love from the folks in Raleigh, who were on the office beach trip! So we went them a picture as well, of course that building in the background is another of the PwC offices in London, the one that Lindsey is assigned to. We're dorks.

After lunch we continued to wander down towards the London Eye and Parliament. Since the weather was so nice, there were hundreds of people out enjoying it! At the market there was a stall selling peach mint ice tea, which totally hit the spot. We enjoyed the view of Parliament from the bridge.

As we were leaving, we saw this guy performing near the bridge and of course we had to stop and watch. The first thing we saw him do was push his body through the head of a tennis racket. I'm not sure if I'm impressed or scarred for life...leaning towards impressed because I'll never be able to do that. Then he hopped up on to this 7ft unicycle and proceeded to juggle knives. Hats off to you Tom!

We took a run through Trafalger Square on our way to the Dominion Theater.

Lindsey being silly!

We got to the theater at 6:30 and it took about 30 seconds to get our tickets. Since the show didn't start until 7:30, we found a little shop and enjoyed a bottle of wine before the show.

The show was amazing. I highly recommended it, for the quality of the singing and story were both great! Totally worth the 30GBP for the tickets.

Sunday

I had made a request to see Kew Gardens while I was in London, we did on Sunday morning.
Here are a few of my pictures.

Kew Gardens employs more than 650 scientists and other staff. The living collections include more than 30,000 different kinds of plants, while the herbarium, which is one of the largest in the world, has over seven million preserved plant specimens. This is a picture of the Temperate House. It's the world's largest surviving Victorian glass structure. It contains plants and trees from all the temperate regions of the world. There is a viewing gallery where you can look down on that part of the collection, that's the picture on the right.

 

The airport was pretty close, so it wasn't as peaceful as it could have been with a plane going overhead every few minutes. After the Temperate House we went to the Treetop walkway.

At about this time, it started to rain...so we left the gardens and headed out for lunch. Another one of my requests was fish and chips, so we went to a little place that Lindsey and Justin had found one day when exploring. The food was excellent and we ended up eating upstairs. The pub was next to a rowing club so there were lots of great pictures of people rowing and sculling.

At first I had no idea what the green on my plate was other than delicious. When Lindsey told me it was peas, I was shocked! But once I figure out where to find peas (they're a summer food so hopefully I'll start seeing them in the grocery store soon) I'm totally going to make it. I found a few recipes for it online, just don't let the name "Mushy Peas" turn you off.

After lunch, we headed back to the apartment and after a little bit of down time, we headed back to the airport! Thanks to Lindsey and Justin for having me!

Next up - tomorrow I'm going to get up early and take some pictures in central Amsterdam!