Vienna to Munich

For our last morning in Vienna, on August 21st, we stopped by Billa for food and then headed for a quiet spot in the imperial gardens to eat it. Along the way we saw a thing.

A statue of Elizabeth (not of England) beckoned as a breakfast location.

We had the whole statue/fountain area just about to ourselves. After breakfast we wandered by the Prometheus temple on our way to Parliament. Prometheus isn't someone who usually gets a "temple" so it was cool to see.

The gardens were very nice. Quiet, and full of lawn gnomes and other adornments.

Nearby we found Parliament. Parliament is helpfully described as possible to tour ... except when in use by parliament :D

Just up the street from Parliament is the Rathaus (town hall), which is also the site of showings for the film festival.

Not a bad spot for a flick!

Just a block or two further up and you can find Sigmund Freud park (have a real Freudian slip!) and yet another fancy building.

Also a status of The Thing and son and a tribute to Vivaldi.

At about this point we started circling back towards the metro to go get our bags and head for the train station to go to Munich. As always you can't walk 15 minutes in Vienna without seeing more imperial grandeur.

At some points it got a little crowded.

The RailJet train to Munich didn't feel particularly fast but there was a fancy screen with large km/h #'s reported on it. And the train had wifi. Horribly slow and remarkably stall prone wifi, but free wifi none the less. Presumably in a year or two it'll be much faster and more reliable. One has to ask: where's the damn high speed train Vancouver <=> Seattle <=> San Francisco <=> LA <=> San Diego?! Sadly the train was German and therefore had reservations and smug claimers of seats. Happily we only suffered one bump and then got to keep our seats the rest of the way.

Upon arriving in Munich we were able to walk to our hotel (no taxi!). It turned out our hotel was in little Turkey; kebab and donair everywhere! We waltzed into a restaurant without an English menu or customer base and managed to negotiate lamb meats, which turned out to come with ample onions and giant naan-like circular flat breads. Delicious!

Although it's no Vienna, Munich still manages pleasant surprises down random streets.