It was raining on and off all night and well into the morning. Rather nice to wake up to trains out of the (rather wet) bedroom window.
The Swan Whisperer couldn't decide whether we should give Vienna a miss and move on towards somewhere like Gmunden - we are due in Fuschl-am-See at lunchtime tomorrow - or what.
But the rain stopped, so we decided to revert to Plan A and caught an S-Bahn into Vienna, to the Franz-Josefs-Bahnhof, which I hadn't heard of before, but seems to be one of the termini.
It was quite a way into central Vienna, but a couple of trams took care of that - it need only have been one tram, but we weren't quite sure where we were going. The first tram seems to have broken down or something shortly before the stop we wished to change at, and people were queueing up to get off; eventually the driver said if people wanted to get off there, he was opening the front doors. So we did, and were intrigued to see a policeman coming to speak to him - I don't know if the tram had broken down, or what!
Anyway, we got off by the Danube, and walked down through that part of the city enclosed by the Ring, seeing the Stefansdom, and a great many other places, including parts of the Hofburg and - to my utter joy - the stables for the Lippizaner horses of the Spanish Riding School and even a couple of horses peering out of their stalls at us!
Which has totally been on my bucket list for years - I doubt I shall ever see a live performance, but even to see their stalls was something!
We were getting hungry by then, so decided to get a sausage from a stall - the Swan Whisperer had Currywurst and I had an ordinary sausage, both in a roll - and then try to find somewhere to have Kaffee und Kuchen. We had just gone past the Hotel Sacher, so decided to go back there and have some of the eponymous Torte, but, alas, half a million other people had had the same idea and the queue stretched round the block!
We found a chocolate place that said it had Sachertorte but, alas, it had sold out. So the Swan Whisperer had Apfelstrudel with his coffee, and I had three little dark chocolate truffles, which were delicious!
Sadly, sitting down was a mistake, and I found I was tired and stiff when we got up, so we walked to where we could catch a tram directly to the station, and then back to the WoMo, which is parked right at the end of the platform!
The Swan Whisperer would have liked to have gone into Klosterneuburg to look at the church there, but something has obviously gone wrong with the trains as the last two were sat at the platform for over 30 minutes each. So he has flopped on the bed with a book, and I am going to post this, and photos, on Facebook and then get supper.
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