G & J away from home

Wednesday, 13 May

This morning we wandered the streets of Vienna.  (After breakfast, that is, which was a huge buffet. Larger than that on the Vista but not really any better.)  Actually, we only wandered a very few streets plus a little bit of the park opposite the hotel.  It was nice not trying to do a whole city in one go as we have been on the tours from the ship.

All over the promenade in the park little grapevines are getting started for their summer growing season.  It looks pretty now but when the grapevines are all filled in it will just look spectacular.

Grapevines in Stadtpark

Another light for my collection, also in Stadtpark.  We only explored a corner of the park before heading back onto the streets to look around.

Lights & Lamps: On the columns in Stadtpark

We only walked around the top left arc - all very pretty but it leaves us something to do tomorrow (weather permitting).

Map of the park

 This statue of Johann Strauss (by Edmund Hellmer, unveiled in 1921) is apparently the most photographed subject in Vienna.  Naturally we couldn't be left out of the statistics!  As you can see the tulips are over now, but they must have been lovely when they were out.

Johann Strauss statue

As we negotiated the streets around the block back to the hotel we had to watch out for cars and trams when crossing the roads, as well as bicycles on the cycle track which is part of or alongside the footpath and sometimes changed from side to side.

We found a lovely bakery and grabbed some supplies for lunch.  As the photo shows, the bad hedgehog somehow got into the lunch bag as well!

Hedgehog with his nose in the food bag

The afternoon was spent catching up with all our emails and photo-sorting - the things we didn't ever have enough time to do on the Vista, plus the hand -washing and an afternoon nap apiece.  All very exciting stuff!

When we got hungry we went down to Sand in the City - the 'beach' just below our hotel window where we had a club sandwich each from one of the stalls there.  With chicken, bacon, ham, egg, lettuce, tomato, and cucumber we certainly could have split one meal and Gary abandoned all the bread layers and just at the filling as a salad.  It was a very relaxing place to grab something to eat, even if I didn't want to leave the boardwalk and actually put my feet in the sand!  (More and more I realise I am just like Mum.)
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