Relaxing in Vienna and the train to Prague

You may have noticed that the font recently got bigger on the blog. This is because I was told that the previous font was really quite small, and for the sake of making it easier for my grandma to read the blog, I wanted to make the change. Hope it's not too annoying for anyone else, but grandma tops you. So there. 

On to today's post!

Vienna was mostly relaxing. It's a very cool city, and when Jay wasn't working we had a lot of fun just exploring. It's one of those places where you can just wander, turn a corner and BAM there's a gorgeous church, or a quirky shop, or a old wine shop. We did go to a couple of tourist attractions. 

Winding streets in old Vienna 

Look! A church!

First we visited the Vienna Clock Museum, and if you don't know why that would interest us, you obviously never visited our apartment in Ann Arbor. We like clocks. I consider it a miracle and an impressive exhibition of self control that we've only bought one clock so far on this trip (in Budapest). It was very cool, with clocks and watches ranging from the 14th century up.

One of the coolest things about the clock museum were all the astronomical clocks. These were clocks with many dials and hands that, in addition to telling time, kept track of the date, and the day of the week, the month, the current zodiac sign, the movements of the planets, the phases of the moon....it goes on and on. This clock was a particular masterpiece of (if I remember correctly) a perfectionist monk who designed the clock and did all the calculations himself. The clock is actually quite bit, about seven or eight feet tall, but here I zoomed in on the face. 

A few of the pocket watches that were part of a collection assembled by a wealthy woman in the 1800s. She not only collected the watches, but also had the tools and know-how to maintain them properly. They also had the book in which she kept track of her collection on display and her penmanship was stunning. 

The Hofburg

More of the Hofburg

A view of Parliament from the Hofburg

After the clock museum we headed across the Danube to a place that has gluten free Weiner Schnitzel. They were also able to make it dairy free for me. It was delicious and the weather was perfect so we got to eat outside.

Most of the time in Vienna, we cooked for ourselves, since we had a lovely full sized kitchen to work with. Sorry, Gnegy Lab, I won't be able to give you much in the way of dinner recommendations, but I think you'll be hard pressed to find food that is anything less than delicious in Vienna. Also, Peggy, you'll be happy to know that they are very good about "lactose free" cooking.

Saturday we went to a flea market that was just down the street from our apartment, adjoining the Naschmarkt, which is a giant open food market, kind of like the French Market in New Orleans. The flea market is held every Saturday, and it was very cool. It took a lot of self control not to buy a carriage clock I saw there, but Jay stopped me (fair, since he'd be the one carrying it). There were lots of tchotchkes and random things, and then you'd look at booth and see a roman coin. Yep. Just sitting there. It was lots of fun until is started to get crowded, and then we made our escape back to the apartment for more coffee.

After that we walked over to Hofburg and went to the Imperial Butterfly garden which was mostly just tourists playing with their DSLRs (Yes, I was one of them) and children ignoring the "don't touch the butterflies" signs. It was cool and pretty, and after that we had a picnic in the park with some sandwiches we'd made earlier and I had fun feeding the ducks the remainder of my gluten free bread. Most of them seemed fine, but I saw one spit it out. 

I spent a solid 10 minutes trying to get a picture of one of these guys who would flick his wings open and shut. He was a flirt. This guy, however, posed for me. 

There were lots of pretty flowers in the butterfly house. These are not some of them. These are plastic flowers that they spray with honey to attract the butterflies down to eye level. As you can see, they are somewhat effective. 

One more butterfly picture. 

We walked around the downtown shopping area and went in search of two things: apple strudel for Jay, and some sorbet for me. We found both. Jays strudel was yummy, and the sorbet I got was some of the best I've ever had. We also wandered in to a giant wine store, which was entertaining for a little bit. We ended up returning to the apartment on the early side, cooked a delicious dinner, drank some more of the young Heuriger wine and relaxed. Austrian Heurigers are cosy pub/biergarten style places that serve the very young wine of local wineries. We didn't have a chance to go do one, but we did find this Heuriger wine, and it was delicious and cheap and we weren't really fussed about making it to an actual Heuriger, since I probably wouldn't have been able to eat anything there anyway. But, hey, you, Gnegy Lab, try to visit a Heuriger. I think you'll have fun. (For those who don't know, my former lab will be visiting Vienna soon for a conference and I was supposed to do some scouting. I failed, but I think they'll have a good time anyway).

Sunday morning we took the train in to Prague. I was dealing with a back spasm, so it wasn't the most delightful couple of hours, but I got to read a lot of Laurie King.

We had a fun moment getting onto the train. When the train pulled in I noted the two economy class cars closest to us, one already had quite a few people, one was almost completely empty, so I told Jay, lets go to that one. And we tried. But it seems like everybody on this platform didn't get the memo about how damned inconvenient it is to lug a giant roller bag around Europe, so we got stuck behind a couple of girls carrying suitcases bigger than they were (for their five week trip. *scoff*). Jay and I ended up being ALMOST the last people on the train. But it ended up being okay, cause almost the entire crowd on the platform was going for the other car, because that's where their assigned seats were. We didn't have assigned seats on our tickets, so we spent some time seriously worried that we'd done something wrong or that we were going to get yelled at in Czech. We didn't do anything wrong, and had no trouble finding seats. Getting off the train was another exercise in feeling superior about my backpack vs. rollerbags. I was weaving through the crowd like an old pro to get away from all of them. My feeling of superiority was slightly damaged about 20 minutes into our walk to the apartment when my back was spasming and I was hungry and tired. But I still have some serious contempt for rollerbags, at least in any situation where you aren't just checking them on a plane. Anyway, we made it to our apartment, met our hostess' husband and their ~2 year old daughter who is a little angel. She knows how to say Hello in English but then she just babbled at us in Czech and we happily acted as though we knew what she was saying. The apartment is absolutely perfect. A lot of the other places we've stayed have had a lot of charm, but this place feels like a home more than anywhere else we've stayed.

After dropping our things we went for a late lunch at a Thai place we'd passed on the way to the apartment. It was amazing and I ate WAY too much. We stopped at the grocery store on the way back to get things for breakfast. We also got some stuff for dinner, just in case, but we didn't think it likely that we would be eating again that night. We were mostly right, we had pudding for dinner. (Yes, Jay ate pudding. This is the second time. He said that it wasn't as tolerable now that he didn't have 3/4 of a bottle of wine in his system).

The view of Prague from our attic apartment

We slept great, we're taking a long lunch to explore the area, and we have dinner reservations at a Michelin star restaurant tonight! Eastern Europe is cheap and it's awesome. More to come!