After a restless night we were up at 2:30 a.m.  You know how it is when one has to get up at a certain time—even with the alarm set, one keeps waking and checking the time then calculating the amount of time left to sleep.  It’s maddening!

By 3 a.m. we were downstairs checking out.  The desk employee was trying to charge us for our rooms when they were already paid! Yikes!  Well we gave him Socrates’ name and address and said to contact him if there was a problem with our bill.  As our taxi driver was already there we were loaded and on our way to the airport by 3:20 a.m.  Needless to say, there was no traffic on the road at this time of the morning, so we had a VERY fast trip to the airport.  For those of you who don’t know, Cypriots drive REALLY fast anyway, so we never look at the speedometer as it will give one heart palpitations!

We arrived at the airport at 4 a.m. and immediately got in line to check our bags.  We had managed to get our boarding passes loaded on our phones as well as have the hotel print them so we could go straight to bag check.   If you wait to print the boarding passes at the airport it just adds another step and can slow up the process tremendously.  Once the bags were checked, we headed through passport control and security.  They went very quickly as the lines were pretty short at this time of the morning (remember Tammy how we had to pay to bypass the huge lines?).

Our flight didn’t begin boarding until close to 6 a.m. so of course we walked to Costa coffee to find a place to sit and have something to eat.  Jody and I both had a cheese pie with a hot drink (hot tea for Jody and a cappuccino for me).  Mike said it was too early to eat and drink so just waited with us.

When we finished, we walked to Gate 27 to wait for the time to begin boarding, which was at 5:55 a.m.  The plane was really full—who would think that this many people wanted to fly so early in the morning?  This was a 3 hour flight (we made fun of that and said we hoped the plane's name wasn’t the Minnow and that we would not land on some unknown place ala Gilligan’s Island)!  About an hour into the flight it was time for breakfast—I am using that term loosely.   Today’s mystery foods were runny scrambled eggs (yuck!), a steamed tomato (so British and to my eyes nasty), and a piece of white bread with something mysterious in the middle although none of us could decide what (was this supposed to be a cake of some sort?), and a roll (supposed to be a hot roll but of course it was ice cold) and hot tea or coffee to drink.  This was a weird unsuccessful attempt at breakfast—why do they even try?! 

During the flight what was there to do but read, sleep, or play games on the phone.  We landed in Vienna about 30 minutes earlier than scheduled which is always great.  Then of course the tedious process occurs—get your carry-on luggage, squeeze your way down the narrow aisle trying not to bang someone in the head with the luggage, traipse down the metal stairs to the tarmac, walk to a crowded bus and then it's off to the terminal.  Once the bus arrived at the terminal it was time to repeat the process and then get into line for passport control (luckily the line for non-EU passports was very short—only us and 2 other people) and then to the baggage area to pick up our luggage.   We always holds our breath to see if the luggage arrived—and whether it arrives undamaged and unopened. Yay today it all arrived without any recognizable damage.

We weren’t sure about how to get to our hotel using the trains as we would have to change trains dragging luggage and during rush hour traffic.  That didn’t sound like fun, did it?  So we decided to pay the extra euros and get a taxi.  The first one didn’t have a trunk that would hold all of our luggage—we really didn’t have that much (one regular size checked bag each and a small carry on and purse for me and Jody, while Mike just had his backpack)—but we had to get another taxi that had a huge trunk.

It took us a while to get to our hotel as this was the morning rush hour here in Vienna or Wien (Veen is how it is pronounced) as they call it here.  We were staying at the Renaissance Wien Hotel outside the Ring but near Schonbrunn Palace.  We were on the 5^th floor (here in the US it would be the 6^th floor as the ground floor is 0 here while it is 1 in the US).  The rooms were nice and very modern with a shower that was huge! But what was that scary picture on the wall of the shower?  And the paint on the window from the WC to the bedroom that looked like dripping white blood?  Strange decorations for sure!

Once we had dropped all our luggage in our room, guess what we decided to do?  You guessed it!  Find someplace to eat.  We walked across the street to the U4 Cafe and Restaurant (the name refers to the Underground 4 stop which was in the complex with this restaurant).   It was a Mediterranean restaurant, so Jody chose calamari and chips and a Coke Light while Mike and I had the veggie stuffed eggplant, rice, pickled cabbage salad and a white dipping sauce plus a coke light for me and a fizzy water for Mike.  The food was very good and not too expensive.

By this time we were feeling rather tired, so we walked back to the hotel and took a nap.  About 3 p.m. we all walked up the street to the Aldi (called Hofer here) on Tivoligasse (Tivoli Street) to get some supplies for the room and snacks for tonight.  Just about 2 blocks from the hotel was a neighborhood shopping area with a plaza, restaurants, clothing stores, a merry-go-round, etc.  It was very convenient.  We then went to the Lidl Grocery which is just down the street from Hofer to see how it was.  We like the Lidl better than Aldi/Hofer when we were in Dublin but here we think Hofer looks better.  

Once back in the room we had a cup of coffee from Jody's Nespresso pot.  We just have a hot pot and some instant coffee as we were not upgraded. Jody has stayed in these hotels much more than we have so she received an upgrade when we arrived. After the coffee/caffeine infusion, we went back to our room to unpack as we will be here almost 2 weeks, and answer emails, etc.  At suppertime we went back to Jody’s room to share some sandwiches we had bought earlier at a little shop in the plaza called BackWerk.  We shared salmon croissant sandwiches but were surprised when what we thought was cheese on them turned out to be eggs.  Mike was horrified as he is not an egg lover, so I put his egg on my sandwich (I am an egg lover!).  And of course, we drank a bottle of lovely white wine.  Then we shared some cookies for dessert and planned tomorrow’s agenda.  Bed tonight was at 8:30 p.m. as we were exhausted from our sleepless night, early rising, and the change in time zone.  Tomorrow will be an exciting first day in a new country and a new adventure for the three of us.