The 4 of us awoke at 9 AM and met our checkout time of 10AM. Dilyara and I had originally intended to stay a larger part of the day in Bratislava and then travel to Vienna; however, it was raining and we decided that it would be easier if Miky and his friend could drop us off with their car at the train station.



Luckily, they did not mind taking us to the train station at all . We said our goodbyes and Dilyara and I walked into the station. Since we had not yet used our EuRail Global Passes, we needed to activate them. We approached a customer service station and began to enquire into how to go about activating the passes. After finally conveying the right information to the woman behind the glass window, she activated our passes.

We then stepped away from the counter to rearrange our Bags to prepare for the 1 hour train trip. Around this time Dilyara asked me where one of my wallets was…. And for some reason…. I did not know. This led to about a 7 minute scare and me pulling everything out of my bag in the middle of the station. Luckily, I found it in my bag, where I had left it the evening before. We boarded the 10:42 train to Vienna and began our Journey together alone.

Our arrival time in Vienna was around 12PM, as expected. We walked out of the train station to find a nice downpour awaiting us. After orientating ourselves with where we needed to go, we set off on our way to our hotel/hostel .

After about a 15 minute walk, we arrived to Cyrus Hotel (price 22 euro per person/night for a double bed private room with shower, toilet, and TV). We got ourselves checked-in, grabbed a map, and set out to explore a wet Vienna.

We started by crossing the street and eating at a small café. There was a drunk man sitting at the bar (around 1 PM) talking broken German to us. We ignored him, but it got to the point where the owner kicked him out (quite funny actually). Overall, the people were nice, but we will probably not be returning to this café for the rest of our stay. We just think there are better things out there.

After finishing up our small meal, we walked our way to Belvedere Palace to see some collections of art. Dilyara especially wanted to see the painting titled "The Kiss" by Klimt . We saw the whole collection of artwork and moved on.

Our next stop was a small grocery store to grab some supplies for the day . I got some 99 cent chocolate cookie things and some dried sausage. Dilyara got a chocolate/yoghurt bar, some chips made with nuts, and some cookies. We are very healthy individuals… please do not worry.

We then left the store and headed toward town. By this time, our tourist map was completely faded out due to the rain… so we were going off of pure “traveler's touch”. We arrived at a Second World War Memorial (Denkmal d. Roten Armee) located near Karlsplatz. We then stepped inside of a cathedral with a green top (Karlskirche) located quite near to the memorial.

After these, we walked into the heart of Vienna, passing the Opera House and heading onto Kaerntner Street which has a ton of shops, and then seeing St. Stephans Cathedral. It was around 6 PM by now and I had a huge blister developing on my food, since around 4 PM. We decided to walk to the tourist center (located again by the Opera house) to obtain a new map (since ours was ruined by the rain) then take the Subway back to our hostel. The tourist office gave us 4 maps (2 copies of 2 different maps), to ensure that they would survive the weather.

We then got on the nearest Subway and came back to the hotel. After doing some work for School and writing this blog, we called it an evening and went to sleep. Tomorrow, we should be doing a free 3-hour walking tour at 10:45 AM, then exploring the rest of downtown. We have temporarily planned Schloss Schonbron to be visited on Wednesday.

All-in-all, today it rained on us all day. We were both soaked, even with our jackets on. This did not allow us to take many pictures at all (and we we][re not allowed to take pictures in the museum either). So, almost 0 pictures for today. Hopefully tomorrow will give us better weather (%70 chance of rain all day), and we will be able to take some more pictures.