Vienna - Day 1

Another weekend, another weekend trip! This weekend I returned to Vienna with some of the GARDP girls. 

Here we are, looking super glam even though we'd barely had any sleep due to the early flight.

Like many old European cities, Vienna is pretty small and easily walkable despite being a former imperial capital. From our hotel, we along the Stadtpark,

to the Karlskirche

and around the Wiener Staatsoper to get to our target,

Cafe Sacher at the Hotel Sacher!

We settled in for morning tea,

and ordered a tasting plate of different sweets that the hotel offered. From bottom to top, they were pancakes with plums, the Sachertorte, ice cream with strawberries, and some truffles. I'm going to put it out there...SACHERTORTE WAS NOT THE BEST SWEETIE ON THIS SELECTION! (The ice cream was, by unanimous decision)

Having rejuvenated ourselves, our stroll around the city continued and we headed to the Stephansdom.

There was a service on so tourists were not allowed into the church proper. 

But we were allowed to look into some of the different chapels.

And as usual climbed the church to get the view over the city. 

Since it was still quite early, our stroll continued to one of the many houses that Mozart lived in in Vienna.

Also, check out this plaque listing some winners of the Mozart medal. It's a who's who.

Cute little courtyard

The Sala Terrena, oldest existing concert hall in Vienna, where Mozart himself performed, and where concerts are still conducted.

Moving along, we headed towards the Hofburg Palace

The entrance from Michaelerplatz

where we saw this Roman archaeological site

Past the riding school stables

Oh hey there, horsie!

and through to Heldenplatz where we collapsed in fatigue

Seriously, we were just lying on the grass, soaking up the sunshine. A weird guy came up and asked if he could take a photo of us lying there. It was weird.

We eventually decided that to cancel out our fatigue, we needed to head to another cafe to get some more sweeties into us.

Cafe Central was our destination

Yarrrrrrm.

YAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRMMMMMM. 

Each of us had a personal favourite. Mine was the cream and rhubarb (top right). As we were about to leave, we realised that despite the earlier warm blue skies, it was actually raining like hell outside. We ended up camping in Cafe Central (and using the free wifi) for about 3 hours. It was awesome.

But we eventually had to leave Cafe Central. We had however settled for an evening plan - since it was the Champions League final and a pair of Spanish teams were playing, we decided to try and find a tapas bar to eat and watch it all. After getting changed and walking to the bar we'd chosen...it turned out it was completely booked out for a private party! No matter, we backtracked a bit and headed to Das Heinz where we were surrounded by cuteness.

Cute decor

Cute drink (needed more alcohol though)

Cute meal

Cute chicks

Cute backroom set up to watch the match!

And here we saw Madrid heartbreakingly defeat Madrid before heading out to go clubbing. A word of caution - Vienna still allows indoor smoking. It's disgusting.