It’s past midnight here in Vienna and I have just finished my bath. Having a bath feels so luxurious because I don’t have a bathtub in my bathroom in Adelaide; besides you feel guilty as well having a bath in Australia, because of the drought and the water shortage over there.
My second day was also enjoyable – I started by getting up earlier in the morning because I’m joining the half-day tour that is part of the “Wien erwartet Sie” (Vienna waits for you) package that I took. The package basically includes a cheaper rate for the two-night accommodation, a free ticket to Albertina (a historic place near the Hofburg Complex that houses some fine art collections as well as art exhibitions), a free sacher torte and coffee at Cafe Schwarzenberg, and the half-day city tour. It also provides free access to the public transport for 72 hours.
The bus picked me and a couple of other guests from the hotel and dropped us at the Südbahnhof Railway Station. There were a lot of bus that also picked tour passengers from all over the city. All of us were then split into tour language groups: English, French, Spanish, and so forth, and moved to a new bus. We then slowly made our way around the city, along the Ringstrasse that circled Vienna. The road was built under the instruction from Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1857 – we passed the many city landmarks. There were some that I already visited yesterday but there were many more that I wanted to visit, so I made some mental notes along the way.
We then moved on to the Schönbrunn Palace, which is the highlight of the tour. The palace was Empress Maria Theresa’s summer residence in the 1700s. If you ever come to Vienna and want to visit the Palace, I think it’s much better to join a guided tour, like the tour that I joined. When we arrived at the Palace, there was a looooong queue in front of the entrance for individual travellers. We didn’t have to queue at all and could get in, as long as we stayed close to the guide. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, nor to bring in our backpacks and every room in the Palace that we could visit was jampacked with tourists. Whilst the palace was impressive, the experience wasn’t. A visit to Schönbrunn Palace isn’t recommended for you if you are claustrophobic and you intend to visit during high season. I asked the guide whether it was always this busy – she said that it was much busier in May. Whoa! So we were ushered in from one room to the next, learning about some tidbits about the Habsburgs, whilst bumping and squeezing with tourists from all over the world.
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