The Road to Budapest - Day 1

21/03/09
I had to leave very early in the morning to catch my flight to Vienna, and Richard was very kind to drive me even though it was at 4:15am! At the airport people were sleeping across bench seats and I even passed to guys in their sleeping bags on the floor. The flight out of the UK and across parts of Europe was beautiful – the patchwork of colours of the fields below changes from random shapes into that of perfect rectangles as far as the eye could see. The landscape on my journey was very flat; there were no hills or mountains in view. My flight with Air Berlin had a short stop-over at the Hanover Airport in Germany and then we continued onto Vienna. The trip notes from Intrepid (Tour Company) made the journey from the Airport to the hotel quite easy despite having to catch a bus, a metro and then a tram. I had a few hours after arriving at the hotel before meeting up with the group so I ventured into the heart of the city and wandered around the clean, pristine streets of Vienna.
The buildings here are very extravagant, the streets are very clean and tidy and the musical culture is spread across the city. There are trams running around the centre of town and many horse and carriage rides on offer. They have stars on the ground outside the main Opera House (like the Hollywood Stars) with musicians such as Strauss on them. There is a statue of Mozart in a garden with the musical clef in bright yellow flowers in front.
I later met up with the group – it is a very small group: 3 of us plus the tour leader. There is me; Gail – an Aussie girl who is a Lawyer for a bank; Sean – a Canadian on an extended holiday and Antonio the Tour Leader – a free spirited guy from Barcelona. We went out for dinner and met up with two of Antonio’s friends who live in Austria but were educated in Britain, so they had a very posh English accent with the hint of German. For dinner we went to a cute little restaurant and I order the traditional Weiner Schnitzel – it was huge, it covered the entire plate and I had to get my potatoes on a separate plate! After dinner we went to a bar that they love – an Irish Bar!