Vienna Waits for You
Travelogue
On the final day of our Austria adventure, we drove from Gmunden to Vienna. This took a couple of hours, but the highways in Austria are excellent so it wasn't strenuous at all. We arrived relatively early and visited the Stadt Park and the Belvedere Palace. This was another one of those sites of 1967 memories, particularly the formal gardens and the fountains. We found the palace partly under facelift scaffolding and the gardens were mostly intact but oddly scruffy, as if they hadn't really been tended in a while. Several of the fountains had been converted to planting beds as well, but the Kaskadenbrunnen or cascade fountain was still running. We call this the "smiling fountain", because there's a 1967 photo of my sister and I sitting on either side of the cascades, grinning ear to ear (can't find it, right now).
The city of Vienna was pretty easy to navigate. One thing that impressed me was that, although there's a lot of new construction, it's mostly low. Building heights seemed to be regulated due to the city's UNESCO World Heritage status, at least in the part of the city we visited. The mostly four-story heights and wide streets made the city seem very bright and open. After walking several miles in Vienna (we averaged about six miles a day of walking on this trip!) we checked in at the "Moxy" Hotel at the airport and then got rid of the car. Spent the early afternoon relaxing and turned in early.
In the morning I woke (ten minutes before my alarm) at about 4 AM and had a couple of cups of cappuccino before heading to the terminal. It was a long day of standing in line, sitting, and looking out the plane window, which I really can't get enough of. Interestingly, on the return trip we flew even farther north, not only crossing Greenland but also Iceland. Flew over the island’s big glacier, which I hadn't seen before. I think this marks the official northernmost place I've been, at about 65 degrees and change. So I haven't been in the Arctic yet, but darn close!
It was a very memorable trip, and it lit a fire. I'll probably be traveling again soon!