6/6/19 - Arriving in Vienna

We caught the plane to Vienna from Heathrow.
We ended up at the airport very early due to a great bus connection ,fast trip and no hitches. At the same time Ben was checking in to go back to Australia at a different terminal.  We knew that he had made it on to his plane before we boarded ours, which was nice.
It was  nice to have only two and a half hours to fly to Vienna. Maybe we will be ready for the next really long one in a month's time when it comes up for us. In the meantime we have to make it through the next month.
It was warm in the airport in Vienna and warmer still as we stepped outside.  It was also humid.  We are starting to get used to that already. It might be the same for the rest of the month away.  That's what you get when you head away in the summer time to Europe.  It is also pretty full of people.

We successfully found the airport bus to take us to the centre of town. We were surprised by how many park areas there were on the way into town.   It pulled up just as we were looking for it.
We made it into our stop in town and then found a nearby English cafe where we could get a good cup of tea (hooray) and some lunch.  The British airways flight we had was a bit like a Virgin one in that you had to buy food at expensive prices on the plane if you wanted it.

We were not able to check in to our apartment for a few hours so we decided to use the hop on and hop off bus.  It was OK except for lugging the bags to the top of the bus and back down.
As usual this exercise did give a pretty good idea of what was around in the city and where it was in relation to other things.  I wish the map was a bit more accurate (don't they have a local orienteer who could help them??) It is really confusing when a line shows as straight ahead and the bus starts doing left and right turns and then something turns up that you think you must have passed ages ago. 

We managed to complete a red loop (the general circle around town) and then a blue loop (out to the University section, the UNO city (for all the UN related activities) and the Prater Park before getting off at the closest stop to our apartment and walking from there.

We have seen a number of electric car charging points around

lots of fancy old buildings

lots of fancy statues.

This is not the main Danube, but the canal. 

One of the lovely parks

The Reaisenrad has a very old ferris wheel with 1`5 suspended carriages - they hold 15-20 people each. 

Franz von Assisi church

lighthouse on the island between the two sides of the Danube

Eventually we made our way to the third floor apartment , which is very basic and stiflingly hot.  The weather in Vienna is HOT and sticky and there is no aircon. 
The beds are an IKEA special. My bed is up the top - but where it is in the one bedroom the door cannot completely open due to the ladder.  You have to squeeze past to get in to the room.  I can look down from my bed on to Trevor on the double bed down below (which would have fitted inside the bunk we think. 

looking to Trev's bed from underneath mine, 

Tiny kitchen with one small frypan, one small saucepan.  Not sure why it has a rolling pin!!! There are certainly no baking dishes. 

Luckily it is not cold and we do not need lots of bedding. - this place is the most sparsely supplied with items of use of any Airbnb we have ever stayed in. You get the impression they have supplied the basics as required and that's it.  Mind you, it was pretty well situated for a pretty good price, so what do we expect? 

We threw the windows open and hoped that it would cool down (it didn't do that much at all).
We found a supermarket and bought the essentials to keep us going , and found somewhere to eat tea (they had an English menu which saved us translating everything and guessing) .  There was still a bit of guessing, (Will they accept the travel card to pay? , will they bring the bill to us or do we need to go inside and pay?. What should we tip?)
We have found a mix of places which will accept travel card or credit card and those who want cash only, 

Sleeping was difficult with the heat and humidity, but we were tired enough to manage it to some extent and woke up ready for another day of new experiences.