the city of spies

After going in circles around the city for what seemed like days, we finally arrived at our hotel in Vienna. Our hotel accommodations were incredible. Apparently numerous diplomats, artists, and composers have stayed here. Our hotel room in particular was a reserved room for a famous Austrian composer whos name I cant remember right now, but the room is 2 floors, 2 bathrooms and includes a balcony as well. Not only that but we are right in the heart of the city next to the St. Stephens church with one of the biggest pedestrian roads in the city. We spent the day just walking around the pedestrian side streets and enjoying the city life. That night we ate dinner at a world class oriental restaurant and had some of the best food in my life, the curry I got was so spicey the waitress had to go into the kitchen and get me a glass a milk because I thought I was going to burst in flames. The Austrian wine we had was unique. It was a blend of 3 different types of grapes used to make 3 different types of wines and I had never tasted anything like it before. We got to bed somewhat early which was a nice change of pace considering I had been up till at least 5am 3 nights in a row with very little sleep.

We woke up the next morning finally rested and ready to go. We booked a private tour of the city for 2 hours. The tour was extremely informative and I was engaged the whole time. The city of Vienna itself is very clean, next to Madrid I thought that it was the cleanest city I had traveled to yet. The city itself was beautiful, a majority of the architecture was in the style known as Art Noveu and it stands out. All of the buildings seemed whitewashed with tall pillars towering in every direction; the facades of the buildings are ornately decorated with heads, leaves, and intricate designs. The city design really reminded me of Paris in the style of architecture and colors used throughout the city. One thing that really caught my eye was the public housing project here in Vienna. A famous Austrian artist and architect named Hundertwasser designed these apartment complexes in Vienna and around the world that are just jaw dropping. The architecture is strikingly similar to that of Gaudi but with a twist, all of his architecture incorporates nature. There really is no way to explain it without seeing pictures because it is like nothing ive ever seen before, definitely one of the coolest monuments ive seen in Europe and I highly recommend that you look it up on Google or Wikipedia, the name of the projects is called the Hundertwasserhaus, you wont be disappointed. That evening we went to a restaurant recommended by the reception and it was fabulous, I have yet to be disappointed by a meal thus far with my family, we have gotten very lucky with our choices of restaurants. After enjoying some traditional Austrian sausages and fondue we headed to a bar for a few drinks and then headed to bed. The next morning we packed everything up into our station wagon and hopped on the Autobahn towards Salzburg, once again driving in the city was impossible and the journey took about 2 hours longer than it should of, but once we got out of the city and into the Austrian countryside the ride was awesome. more on that later….