Last Day in Vienna

We awoke on Sunday morning, exhausted, after our two frenetic days of sightseeing. Since we were both tired we decided to take it easy. The lady in charge of our pension was nice nice enough to allow us to keep our luggage there after we checked out so we didn't have to lug it around the city until our 6:30 PM flight. Baggage free, we set out to take in a few more sights in the city.


We started with a walk east from our pension to the Stadtpark. This is the former emperor's hunting grounds now a city park. It's full of trees, ponds, fountains, and statues. It's also the park where Johann Strauss used to give his famous waltz concerts at the Kursalon near the grand entrance. On our way to the park we found the last remnants of Vienna's city wall which was torn down in the 1850s and replaced with the Ring. This remnant is at the entrance to one of the U-Bahn terminals near the park. We also saw a great big statue of Beethoven and a Gymnasium where Schubert went to school.


After a nice stroll we continued south toward Karlsplatz. This is a gigantic square that has an enormous baroque style church (Karlskirche), the Wien Museum, and the Succession, an art museum that is home to a famous mural by Gustav Klmit. We visited the museums and had a picnic lunch of sandwiches that we bought from a little booth in the subway in the square. Afterward we had some coffee at Cafe Tirolerhof near the Opera and made our way back toward the hotel. We stopped for ice cream at Zanoni and Zanoni in Hohermarkt and then visited the Jewish Memorial in Judenplatz.


We got back to our hotel around 5:15 PM, picked up our bags, and headed toward the U-Bahn. There is a direct train from the Landstrasse U-Bahn stop to the airport so we took that. It's a 15 minute ride and we were dropped off at the terminal. Check in took forever and they had to close down one of the terminals due to some unclaimed baggage but we eventually were on our way.

After our flight we had a 12 hour layover in Amsterdam so we got a hotel room right next to the airport at a place called Citzen M. After staying in nice pensions and the Hotel Garni for three weeks, this was kind of weird but it was cheap and close so we didn't mind. The room was the width of a king size bed and probably twelve feet long. The shower and the toilet were encased in a couple of cylinders with sliding glass doors. The closest thing I can compare it to is the transporters on Star Trek (you know, beam me up Scotty). At least it was a room and we weren't sleeping in the airport.


Our flight left the next morning and we arrived in Chicago at 12:30 PM on Monday. Kaia's aunt picked us up from the airport and we came back to Champaign that same evening, cats and all. When we arrived at our apartment it was 92 degrees in the living room. Our air conditioning was broken. Welcome home!