Wien (Vienna)

So with just our luck, we have been hitting many cities right when there is a Euro 2008 soccer game going on in town...ugh. It has not been too bad, but since Vienna is the biggest city in Austria, this place is most impacted by the fans. Luckily we made a reservation on the train from Salzburg to here, otherwise it would have been tight getting a seat, especially with our huge suitcases (we did not pack as light as we maybe could have). All that aside we did get a good first day in Vienna. Our hotel, Hotel Allegro is ok, seems like it was a nice hotel in its day, but it is a bit rundown. Fortunately we were able to get accommodations in Vienna these days, currently there is no availability in the city at all!

Our first sight today was the Schonbrunn Palace; we took the 1 hour Grand Tour of the interior, which was beautiful.  

We also explored the rear gardens, which were immense.

After that we hopped on the Underground (Subway) to the Naschmarkt (Outdoor Market) area to eat at an Asian restaurant that was recommended by our Lonely Planet Austria book called Mr. Lee (I figured it was good luck to go there, since my first employer was a Korean named Mr Lee, who owned a Pizzeria in Centereach, NY where I grew up. I washed dishes by hand at the age of 15 (off the books of course) and ate lots of free pizza, and was able to buy my first drum set (had to throw that story in there ;)). Mr Lees was awesome, you would not know by looking at it (looked almost like a fast food Chinese place), but they had tables outside in the Market area and the food was cheap and awesome. Mr Lee himself was there..all smiles all the time. I had a lime fried chicken and Court at the Satay Chicken and we started with a California salad, which was bean sprouts and Salmon and Yellow Tail sushi...really good.

We then started the Walking Tour (Lonely Planet has a walking tour for every city..sometimes there are blah..but we always hit them). We had to end our walking tour halfway due to the huge Fan Zone for the soccer setup in the center of town; we got our way back to the Sacher Hotel and had Sacher Torte (made famous by this hotel, and sold throughout Austria). It is a chocolate covered chocolate cake (had a hint of orange to it), it was very good, the Wien Malange (coffee with Milk) is also a coffee style (was very much like a cappuccino..very milky) specific to Vienna, this was a great way to end the first day here.