Friday 11 June 2010 Vienna

Friday 11 June 2010 Vienna

Today we had things to do, train tickets to buy, hotels to book in Innsbruck and Ljubljana, buy a fuel bottle as we now have our multi-fuel burner for the trangia stove and send some of our warm clothes home. In fact the little parcel we set home weighed 2kg!!! That's 2kg less we will have to drag up the hills we know we are going to meet as we head south.

Vienna, another beautiful European city with obviously lots of money somewhere. I've never seen so many jewellery stores with armed guards standing outside, actually I've never seen a jewellery store with an armed guard standing outside anywhere. Last night we did an embarrassing thing and had a beer in the local Australian Pub, yeah I know it's cheesy but normal pubs are not common over here, except of course in England. On the continent they are mostly Cafes or Restaurants that serve drinks as well they just dont have that 'sitting in a pub having a beer' feel about them. It's also hot and our hotel room has no aircon so Sandy and I are sitting here sweating, gee we miss Darwin :)

On our walk around Vienna this morning we were standing in the middle of one of the big pedestrian malls and we both agreed that we'd like an icecream. Just as we were trying to remember where we'd seen an icecream store a man on a little electric cart came up, parked right beside us, and I'm talking 2ft here, and set up his little mobile icecream stall. “I would like a 40ft yacht” were my next words but our powers of thought seem to only work for icecreams. We all had quite a laugh as I explained to the vendor what had just happened.

The plan now is to catch a train to Innsbruck tomorrow and then a train on Monday to Ljubljana, Slovenia where we will start riding again. Innsbruck is in the middle of the alps and is supposed to be very beautiful. We thought we'd better at least see some 'real' mountains before we leave this part of Europe. The train is because even though we'd like to see the alps we dont have any real desire to ride over them :) From Slovenia we then head toward Croatia and the ocean. We are both very keen to see the ocean again.   

The following photos are what happens when cycle tourists use a nice hotel room to clean their gear :)