Vienna: Day 3

We started out our final day in Vienna a little later than the past two, because we had to check out of the hotel before departing for the day's adventures.  Since our train left at night but checkout is midday, the hotel was pleased to hold our stuff until closer to when we departed. We decided to head back down towards the Spanish riding school.  Laurel had wanted to do some souvenir shopping on Thursday, but she hadn't gotten a chance to do it because the riding school's shop closed early in preparation for their grand ball on Friday evening.  We were soon stopped, however, by some sort of marching band.  We never completely figured out what they were, but they played a song familiar to the school's performances, which...

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Vienna: Day 2

After a much-needed solid night's sleep, we got the day started at a more comfortable time (i.e. about three hours later than yesterday).  Today's main attraction was the vast palace and grounds that make up Schönbrunn!  Andy was excited to revisit one of the sites he had been to when he came to Austria in high school, and I was just excited to see this royal spectacle of design and construction myself.  It did not disappoint.  Let's just add some photos to show some of the highlights of the Habsburgs' fancy: Here is the "front yard," the large courtyard in front of the palace where carriages would enter.  Puffer, of course, came along with us and found his own miniature of the front courtyard. And...

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Vienna: Day 1

The post title is a bit misleading.  It's actually going to start a little before we arrived in Vienna.  Laurel and I took an overnight train from Krakow to Vienna, and it was our first non-plane-overnight-travel experience.  I can say that it was better than anticipated.  We paid for a cabin for just the two of us.  There was more space than I had feared.  The sleep was about as I had expected because the train had to stop at various points, which has a way of waking you up even when it's a relatively smooth transition from movement to parked.  Laurel's edit: the sleep was actually fairly poor, at least for me, but I suppose that wasn't entirely unexpected.  I was just annoyed that I woke up every time...

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Saturday: Variety!

Laurel is feeling better, but not 100%.  As such, she decided not to accompany me on my morning run today.  I was actually looking for a bit more than a run this time around.  Due to my having to, you know, work during the day and Laurel being ill, we haven't made much progress on searching for a gym.  This is entirely our own fault, as we've gotten several good references and searches; we simply need to make a little more effort to visit some places and make a decision. So, I went out hoping to find something like an outdoor fitness park.  I had an idea of where to look.  There's a park across the street from Blonia, by the Wisla soccer stadium.  Here's a link to it on Google Maps.  Apparently it's...

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