Day 17 - Travel to Vienna

Venice has been interesting, and we're glad we decided to visit. There are also things we still want to see, but we have had enough of Venice for the time being. The crowds, at least at this time of year, are too much. It's also exhausting to walk everywhere in this heat, and benches to sit down are scarce (let alone one in the shade). We have also gotten tired of the poor or even rude service at many of the cafes and stores here. Obviously you don't need to give good service or even good food to do good business in Venice. It's also too expensive to stay here too long - everything costs much more than anywhere else we've been.

After doing some errands in the morning, we went to the train station to catch our train. It was lucky we had arrived early, because when we arrived we noticed that the person at the ticket booth had given us a reservation for the wrong day! After typically unhelpful service from the ticket office, we managed to get a new reservation (at extra cost to us).

Deciding to have a drink at the cafe at the train station was a mistake. Receiving rude service from the waiter, we decided to leave without ordering anything. Venice had gotten too much for us.

On the train we had seats in different rows. We're convinced the ticketing staff at Santa Lucia station are hopeless - buy your tickets from another station, or online. The train was half-empty and we had unoccupied seats next to us, so we sat next to each other anyway.

Apart from that less-than-ideal start to the journey, the rest of the trip was pleasant enough. Having dinner in the dining car was a nice way to spend some of the time. Although we wouldn't rave about the food, it was made to order and tasted fresh - and was better than half the stuff we ate in Venice. We weren't sure what to expect from the dining car so it was nice to see tablecloths, full sized plates and real cutlery. The best thing was the stunning scenery.

A castle from the train window.

Arriving in Vienna we easily made our way from the train station to our hotel by catching the S-Bahn (city train syatem) a couple of stops and switching to the U-Bahn (metro). We were at our hotel in minutes.

A station of the very efficient S-Bahn.

For some reason almost every hotel in Vienna (ones that advertise online, anyway) seemed to be booked out for this night, a Tuesday, when we checked a few days ago. What we had to do in the end was stay in a more expensive hotel tonight, and switch to a cheaper one tomorrow. We're not trying to be martyrs, and we're sure you're not feeling sorry for us right now, but that's why we stayed in a more expensive hotel tonight. Our hotel for the night the Radisson SAS Style Hotel which is nice, even though it does have a bit of a generic international hotel feel.

For the first time since we arrived in Europe, our room had a bar fridge (although we didn't have tea and coffee making facilities). I don't think they understand the concept of the mini-bar over here - it was all complimentary. In Australia, at least, the mini-bar is used to squeeze as much money from the guest as possible. Needless to say, we ate and drank everything - we were paying enough for the room.

Our hotel room.

One thing we noticed is how quiet everything is around here, such a nice change from Venice. There's almost no-one about on the streets. Vienna seems to shut down at night.