6.12.2011

River cruises, bumper cars & opera houses: Germany Part 5

In the middle of all this Korea mess, I completely forgot to share Vienna with you! Oops. Enjoy Vienna!!

I have to be honest, Vienna wasn't my favorite city. There are parts of it--by the opera house, etc--that are really nice. But it somehow lacked the charm that Salzburg and Munich had. Maybe it's because we had such a short time there. Maybe if I'd been there longer I would love it more.

One of the first things we did was take a cruise on the Danube River, which runs through Vienna. The cruise was really fun: we saw some of the city & had fun relaxing on the boat. While we were cruising the Danube, I noticed something interesting: there is graffiti everywhere in Vienna. Unlike the graffiti we're used to, most of the Vienna graffiti was really well done. It seemed more like art work than graffiti. We also saw what has to be the coolest looking waste sanitation plant in the world. You see the building with the gold ball thing below? That's the waste sanitation plant. I wish I could have gotten a better shot of the building since it looked like something out of Dr. Seuss.
After our cruise we headed over to Prater to ride the giant ferris wheel. Sadly we only got to go around one time, but we had a lot of fun looking at the amusement park and much of Vienna. After we got off the wheel, we decided to give the bumper cars a try. Since the park wasn't crowded we ended up being the only people on the bumper cars.

It turns out that in Austria, you can hit someone really hard in a bumper car. Kara was told not to buckle her seat belt. As a result, almost every time she got hit she went flying across her car. You could actually hit someone so hard that your car stopped moving! We were all convinced we were going to get in trouble but the attendant didn't seem bothered by the fact that we were all trying to give each other concussions. Thankfully everyone in the family is a good sport (and rather tough) so we all had a blast.

After the bumper cars Kara and I tried out a smaller roller coaster along with the log ride. The roller coaster was much like ones in the US except once again we were told seat belts were not necessary. We buckled anyways. The log ride, however, was much more interesting. In American log rides, there are seat belts and restraints. Not in Austria. We got in our log to discover there was a plastic coated bench and two metal rails running along the side of the log to hold onto. As we headed up the hills, it was my responsibility to hold on tight since I was in the front. Kara clung to me like a barnacle to avoid sliding backwards. We laughed so hard but did decide to avoid any of the other more dangerous looking rides.

After the amusement park (and its lack of safety regulations) we headed into the city center to see St. Stephens, a gorgeous cathedral. We had time for a little souvenir shopping before eating a final meal at a nice outdoor restaurant in the middle of the main shopping drag. Sadly we had to call it a night early: our flight was leaving at 6:20 the next morning and we still had some packing to do.

Even though our time in Vienna was short and it wasn't my favorite city, I'm still glad we got to spend time there.

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