Vienna Day Two

 In Austria shops are not open on Sundays. Even supermarkets are closed. But restaurants and bars are open. So there isn't much to do except eat and drink.

We strategically chose to visit Schönbrunn Palace on Sunday for this reason, and we booked early tickets. You need to choose a 15 minute window (8:30am to 8:45am) and arrive during that time. Miss it and you forfeit your tickets! So we had to get up early, catch the train there, and allow plenty of time for walking to the palace and finding the entrance.

Given we planned to be inside most of the time, and also taking the underground, we dressed lightly. A gamble because forecasts for cold wind and low chance of snow. The snow never came, but boy was it cold! We ended up waiting outside about 30 minutes before entering.

Outside, there were Christmas Markets. They are everywhere! These were closed but the palace had a big welcome sign lit up.

The palace was well presented inside and out. We did the "Royal Tour" including audio guide. We ended up sandwiched between large tour groups, so to avoid being crowded we sometimes hung back, or pushed through ahead, depending on the rooms.

Here is a small selection of the rooms we saw.

On completion, we walked back to the train, and back to our hotel to thaw out. We watched some TV and generally didn't do much.

Mid afternoon, we ventured out for food. A place called Le Burger had caught our eye, so we went there for a late afternoon lunch. Unfortunately Helen's burger was not what she ordered, and we complained to two staff and nothing was done. So when it came time to pay the bill we refused to pay for her burger, and got into a big argument with the manager until he agreed.

We went for a general walk around, bought some gelato cones nearly and people watched for a while.

Tomorrow we catch a train to Bratislava. This is considered a local / regional ride, only one hour long, and we couldn't book in advance. So we caught the underground to the main train station, purchased our tickets, and then returned to our room for sleep.