Vienna to Salzburg 23 August 2010

First photo is our brave little soldier who has faithfully carted us across Europe. Vienna to Salzburg could've been a lovely trip except for the road authority deciding to put up what appeared to be traffic sound walls all over the place to protect the locals but they also had the effect of preventing the tourists from seeing any of the lovely little towns on the way. A fairly uneventful trip.

Vienna 22 August 2010

Some weary travellers again taking some refreshments. This was again part of the film festival in Vienna. Thought we might have a look at a couple of amber films on a beautiful warm afternoon in the park.

Vienna 22 August 2010

Bottom is St. Peters church. Today was our big church day as you can see. Middle is Roman ruins dating back to the 2nd to 4th centuries unearthed during some construction work. There is part of a mural on one wall and the information plaque says the building would have had a heated floor. The final photo is of a young bloke done up as Mozart and he just stands on this box all day and entertains tourists and hope they drop coins in his tin. Young blokes doing this sort of thing are all over Europe.

Vienna 22 August 2010

St. Stephen's cathedral. There was a mass happening when we went in. Must've been a special occasion since there was about 6 priests. The shot of the front looks a bit funny because they're renovating the front of it and what they do over here if they're renovating one of these old buildings is create a cover for the scaffolding which looks exactly like the building itself.

Vienna 22 August 2010

The little 11th century church we mentioned yesterday.

Images of Vienna 21 August 2010

The first one's the horse 'n' cart Skin. The last one is Mozart's statue with the flowers forming a treble clef. There are also statues to Strauss and Beethoven.

Today was a fantastic day for sightseeing weatherwise. About 28-30 degrees. Tomorrow is predicted to be 31, a stinker for Europe. Glad I brought warmer clothes (just in case).

Vienna 21 August 2010

Happy birthday Helen. Some shots of Vienna for you. Well folks the drive from Klagenfurt to Vienna was again quite pretty with a lot of typical Austrian countryside and little towns. We also saw 3 old castle ruins but unfortunately couldn't stop for a closer inspection because of time aspects. Most of the buildings in Vienna are not very old in our terms only 100 to 200 years. There are, of course, some significantly older ones like the old church we're going to look at tomorrow which is 11th century. Unfortunately, as we had mentioned before, if other European cities have put up huge billboards on old buildings Vienna has made an art of it. They're everywhere.

In one of the town parks today they had set up a huge screen and eating and drinking kiosks for a film festival. The kiosks had food from various countries, including Australia. The blokes and the girl serving at the Australian one were Viennese though and the food was an attempt to adapt kangaroo meat, prawns and chicken to the way food is served in Austria. Barbecued kangaroo with rice? We decided to have Thai instead - good old chilli beef. Excellent.