Vienna, Austria

From Salzburg, we took the Westbanh train to Vienna, total travel time: 3 hours.  I really liked the new Westbanh trains, they were all equipped with free wifi so the 3 hours train ride went quickly! Another thing I liked about Westbanh was that the ticket is flexible meaning that you can travel any day, any time. We were originally planned to take the 7:26 am train but after spending a long day in Hallstatt yesterday, we decided to take the 9:26 am train instead so we could get more sleep!  We arrived at Wien Westbahnhof and took the underground metro U3 to Volkstheater‎ and change to U2 to Karlsplatz which our hotel was located. We stayed at Hotel Imperial, it was a palace of the prince of Württemberg! The hotel made us felt like we were back to the 19th Century Vienna.

Our room, very spacious and well furnished.

Hotel lobby with chandeliers

We rested a bit and went out, the hotel was located right near the Vienna Opera House so it was really convenient. We went on a tour of the Vienna Opera House at 3:00 pm, note that the tours are not available everyday so check before you go at their website: http://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/Content.Node/home/opernhaus/fuehrungen/Termine.de.php

Vienna Opera House

We had a chance to see the backstage of the Opera House and we were lucky that while we were there, the crew was setting up the stage for tonight's show.

It was really interesting to see the team effort it took to even prepare for a show! The tour lady took us to different rooms in the Opera House and the history behind them.

Ceiling details inside the Opera House:

The tour lasted less than an hour but we learned a lot more about the history of the Opera House!  After the Opera House, we walked to the Church of St. Charles Borromeo, a very nice baroque style church.

Then, we walked back to the center area to search for our dinner restaurant. Street in Vienna with classic buildings:

 In the center, there were many street performers.  Here were two...how they did it?  I am guessing the stick is actually metal inside and it connected to two bases so when the weight of those two sitting on each the base to keep the whole structure stable.  You can see there's no strength involved and their costumes covered the structure.

We had dinner at Bettelstudent which was pretty close to our hotel. We entered the restaurant, there were a lot of smokers but the restaurant has a non-smoking section or else we'll leave right away! I have heard that Viennese portions are huge but didn't realized how huge they were until our food came....

This was an appetizer only:

Fire ribs

We could easily share a dish and still be very full LOL! The food were tasty but on the salty side and the prices were excellent for the quantity around 15 euros per dish!

After dinner, we went back to our hotel and rest in our beautiful room :) Tomorrow will be a full sightseeing day!