Day and a half in Vienna

Vienna Day 1
Austria has a great rail system. We met a train only a 20 minute drive from where we were staying in Villach. The great this about the train is that it was divided into rooms with six seats facing each other that can be collapsed to form three beds in the room. So, M, my sister and I got a very clean private room on the train for our 4 hour trip to Vienna.The train ride was quiet smooth and very efficient. It did cost us about $160 for the trip but it meant no one had to drive us into Vienna. The train did have a lot of people on it too. I would imagine during major travel times it was very full.We had a beautiful two days in Vienna. My sister showed us around a little and made sure that we were not going to get lost. She also showed us how to use the public transit system without getting kicked off our fined for not having a proper ticket. Then set us free. She was only a student in the city and knew a little bit about the Art Museums and how to get around but could not tell us much about the history or unique things about Vienna, So we were on our own.
Beautiful fountain in a small park in the center of the city.There was also a wonderful rose garden. M is drawn to roses anytime she finds them so I had lots of time to take pictures. The building is Rathaus. I don't know much more than that. We went to the plaza infront of this building for a video concert later in the evening. There were food vendors set up and lots to drink and a great big video screen with risers and chairs to watch a concert of teh Vienna Philharmonic. It was a great place to get a feel for night life in Vienna.
Vienna was incredibly clean by far the cleanest city I have ever been in. Austria in general made the US look very messy and I felt a little ashamed that in the country with all that we have we cannot be cleaner and take care of the environment and pick up after ourselves.



McDonald's is even in Austria but they are decorated to fit into the architecture of the area. I did not go into any of the McDonald's we came across but I am told they are a little healthier and also have different options than we have in the US. I just really am sorry that McDonald's is what we have shared with the world. Is this really what people in Europe think American eat?


The Cathedrals in Europe are amazing. I have not been in anything in the US that compares. This is the inside of Stephandome. The thought of these structures being built and the inspiration to build such elaborate and ornate cathedrals is beyond my comprehension. Part of me questions the purpose of, expense and time required to build such amazing structures. Then there is the part of me that is simply amazed by the ingeuity and beauty.

I loved how the light from the stain glass was shining on the ceiling in the cathedral. Unfortunately we could not go up in the tower at the cathedral

Gargoyles are really cool I have lots of other pictures of gargolyes from England and Austria on my Shutterfly site. The contrast of newarchitecture and very old was also really neat to see.



I found it really cool that there were sun dials on buildings. I took a couple of pictures of these. I would like to know more about what all the markings on these are for.

Vienna Day 2
We started off the day going to Visit Schonbrun Palace. This was the Home of the Austrian Royalty. The really amazing thing I found about this palace was all of the historical events that occurred here or were connected to major historical figures.
We went of the grandtour and saw pictures of Marie Antoinette show was related to Austrian Royalty and the rooms where Napoleon lived when he occupied Austria. Of course they don't allow you to take pictures inside but there was a banquet hall where Kruschev and Kennedy met that I think my entire house would fit in and there would still be room to walk around the house. The lives of Royalty must have been beyond imagination for us normal middle class folk in the 21st century.




We paid for the grand tour of the palace which included the building and gardens and some other extras like an apple strudel baking demonstration with samples.

The gardens were very well groomed and I love taking pictures of flowers. These Lilies were in the fountain and pond behind us in the picture above.





The fountain on in the gardens was amazing and gigantic. The top of this fountain was easily 40 feet tall. And elaboretly carved with gods, goddess and animals.


There was a hole through the back of the fountain that you could see the palace and the gardens. There was actually a line of people waiting to take pictures from behind the fountain.


M and I also wandered the maze in the gardens. Once you found the "end" there was an observation platform. M took pictures of me trying to find my way out again.

We got done visiting Schobrun and found ourselves with not enough time to really see much more in Vienna. There was lots to see at the palace. We went back into the heart of Vienna hoping that we could take a tour of an Opera house but as it happened they did not publish teh brochure we had that tours did not happen on Tuesday. We found that out when we got to the entrance of the Opera House. So we went to the Music Museum and saw wax figures of famous Austrian Musicians. We lost track of time and had to hurry back to meet my sister only to find that we had missed our train. We had to take an Italian train back to Villach an hour later. Italian trains as it turns out are not as clean as Austrian trains. We got back to bed around 00:00. We did get to sleep on the train. We knew that tomorrow was going to start early and be a great hike but long!

Austria Day 1 and a half.

We arrived in Austria late on Saturday so there was not much time to see the sites so I have made this blog about the first half day and the next full day!After arriving and Austria and greeting Thomas and Emily it was obvious that Thomas wanted to show off his country. He wanted to take us on late night hikes to see the sun set and Early morning hikes to see the sun rise. He wanted to show us castles, local festivals and the high mountain peaks. Two problems with this we only have a limited 5 day visit and Thomas was working most of it. We still had a great time. I want to go back.
First before we even got to meet Thomas' Family and drop off our luggage or freshen up from our flight Thomas brought us to see 2 old castles. Both were partial ruins. The First was mostly intact but the second had very limited portions of the original castle still standing. Both are being used as restaurants and entertaining space.

The first castle was on the way from the airport to lastschach where Thomas' Family lives. The do raptor shows some days and have some resident vultures. It was actually kind of sad to see these birds with nearly 7 foot wing spans stuck in a cage. A few times we would see one go near the top of the cage and spread it's wings in teh breeze. You could see it imagining it was soaring on the breeze instead of being stuck in a cage.They were really neat to see though.

We arrived at the second castle and there was a wedding going on. Apparently this castle after being turned to ruins was renovated and a big stage was added. The week after we were there Bobby McFerrin was performing and The Three tenors had preformed there.

This view was looking out in the direction Thomas lives and you can just make out Faaker See in the distance behind the stone work. Faaker See is the local lake. It has an amazing blue color that you can just barely make out in pictures. Google Earth does a pretty good job!
We got back to Thomas's hous later than his father had planned the meal and had a traditional version of Austrian Perogies, home made. We also met Thomas' family and had good wine.

The next morning I was greeted with this view from the back porch of Thomas' Family's house. From what I was told and can be seen on Google Earth the peak of this moutain as well as the peak of all the southern mountains are the border between Austria and Italy and Slovania. It would take a long time for that view to get old!
Thomas' family besides the language barrier had a hard time figuring out what we would eat for meals. We didn't want to impose more than we already had but some of the meals we were offered were interesting to say the least. We had what they would have called a farmers breakfast this morning. We had a hardboiled egg, meat spreads, cheese, tomatos, Cucumbers, and bread. It all tasted good but it was a little odd to spread meat on bread. The rest of the mornings we did not eat this way. When Emily got up she asked why we weren't offered cereal.
Emily took us on a 16 mile bike ride around latschach that morning while Thomas was at work. This Bike ride was about all Marika could handle because there were lots of hills. The final leg of the journey ended up being cut short because Emily's choice of short cut back to the house was direclty over a rather large hill, more like a mountain. Thomas was called to rescue us and brought a hotel van to get the bikes and return us home.
We came back cleaned up and met some of the neighbors all of whom are related in some way to Thomas and then went to the Kafe Katastropha located right nextdoor to the house. Apparently owned by Thomas' Mothers sister. I really liked the name.The picture shows their menu but you can't quite make out the name. This is a view from the back of the cafe. The house where we were staying was right over the hill in the picture.
Thomas met us at the cafe and we headed off for our first Hike. We hiked over 1,000m up in about 1.4 miles. If I can figure it out I will include the Gpx file from my GPS and it can be opened in Google Earth.
The rest of the day was spent hiking and then we went into Villach after. Since this blog is getting long I will keep this short. Enjoy the pics and if you want to look at way more pics I have included them in a link on the side.This is Marika making it to the hut were a couple live 6 months out of the year serving food and drink to the hikers on the mountain. It was at over 1,500m above see level.This is the front of the hut. All 4 of us are there. Emily could have continued but stayed with Marika at the hut as Thomas and I went to th summit.
This is not the summit we went too. I would have loved to. I can't beleive that Emily did this one with Thomas they have also slept at the peak. This peak is called Mittagskogel and was more than 1,000m meters above us.View from the peak that Thomas and I got to. There was a storm coming in from Italy which is right over this mountain peak. The sun was also setting quickly.Thomas is right at home on the mountians he is looking out over Austria .On our hike back down Thomas spotted this frog hoping across the trail. I like taking pictures of wildlife, probably not as much as V does.
After our hike we headed into town and didn't really see much. We did have a pint of the local beer Villacher.
That is enough for now. More next time about our trip into Vienna.

Day 1 summer vacation...Flying to Austria

First of the blogs about my vacation hopefully will be quick and too the point. Flying to Austria.
A great deal of thought went into how we would get to Austria this summer. My sister had pointed me in the direction of Ryan Air. Ryan air is probably foreign to anyone who does not fly in the EU very often but was a very popular airline over there. We had to get there.
Our original destination was England but if we going there then I really need to also go to Austria to see my sister. M and I booked flights to London using Air Canada and then found Free. Yes Free flights from London to Austria. The catch is first you need to catch these tickets at just the right moment to get them free and you have to pay for all fees and luggage you check. They are also very strict about the weight of your luggage and will charge 30 EU Dollars for every kilogram over. They are also very strict about getting their and checking in on-time.
The flight to London was uneventful we even managed to get bumped to an earlier flight so we had plenty of time to leave Heathrow airport and travel across London to get to Stanstead Airport. This was a major concern will we make our connecting flight to get to Austria on time.
As it turns out we had plenty of time. We sat in the Stanstead airport people watching for over 3 hours. Stanstead is a major hub for the EU and people from everywhere in the EU are flying through there. The activity never seemed to ease up and the variety of people coming and going was astounding.
Now you ask as every person I has spoken to "how can Ryan Air offer free flights." American airline companies are filing chapter 11 and raising rates like a bad habbit but this company manages to offer Free flights. Well they only operate one kind of plane a Boeing 777. Their flight crew does everything from check luggage to loading luggage and taking boarding passes. They were in and out of an airport in less than 15 minutes. There was no downtime. Now the accomodations are not what americans are used to either. First it was obvious that advertising was also a revenue stream. From the lotto tickets sold during the flight to the advetising space on the head rest of the seat infront of you they were all about advertising. Second there were no frills, the seats didn't even recline. First come first serve boarding and seating, speed in the airports and advertising were obvious things that Ryan Air was doing to keep their costs down. I compared this to a flying school bus.
We got to Austria safe and sound. Em and Thomas met us at the Airport in klagenfurt and could even wave Hi as we got off of the plane.
More stories to follow! Thanks for Reading Fly Ryan Air if you don't mind some missing accomodations next time you are in the EU!

Free WiFi

I recently returned from a summer vacation to Europe. We went to Austria and and England. I will be updating the blog with those adventures soon. But what I want to talk about now is, what happened to free WiFi? Not so long ago there were many retail, service and lodging businesses that offered free WiFi to their customers and any person that wanted to sit in the parking lot outside their store. What happened to that? Running a WiFi hotspot can't cost a business so much that they have to pass that cost onto the their customers, and the prices they charge are so high that it is obvious the purpose is not simply to deter the people sitting in the parking lot out front from "stealing" the service.
I used to be able to get free WiFi in any Airport. Then recently the last 2 years it has started to change. Now T-Mobile and many others have started to provided a pay service in many airports and Starbucks. I also remember within the last year that I have had Free WiFi in hotels. The hotels that I have stayed in recently want to charge anywhere from $9-30 a day. I pay less than $30 a month to have Internet in my house. And if I divide the cost of a wireless router over it's lifetime it is a negligible added expense. The worst part about this expense is the service being provided for this exorbitant cost is ridiculously slow. I would hope that if I am going to pay even 9 dollars a day to have Internet in my hotel room than it better be very fast service. No waiting around for anything, the service I encountered was more like going back to the days of Dial-up.
Now I also rarely am on business travel so no one is going to pick up this cost for me. I will admit I have an Internet addiction but I use it to keep in touch with people, mostly family, when I am on the road I would love to be able to send the quick e-mail, up load a few pictures or add to my blog. I am not a workaholic. When I am on vacation (which is the main reason I would ever be in a hotel or in an airport) I am on vacation the internet is going to be used purely as a source or entertainment and because I find enjoyment in sharing and keeping in touch with my family, I certainly wouldn't be typing away furiously to finish the next project when I could be out enjoying the world.
Obviously someone needs to pay for all of the infrastructure that is out there and allows the Internet to operate. But with the ubiquity of wireless devices and users out there the cost should be spread pretty thin by now and if I am in a hotel room 1 or 2 dollars extra for the convenience would be a reasonable additional expense for my enjoyment. $9 or more is a source or immense frustration then it is a choice internet or lunch, maybe $30 that is a nice dinner.
Last word if I am already paying for a service, coffee, bagel, flight, hotel room etc. Internet should be included Not additional! Free the internet!

Enough of that.

YES I was in Austria and England. Since I was away for 16 days total, school starts next week and while I was away I had very poor Internet options, I will plan to post one blog per day every day until I have finished sharing this summers European Adventure!