Aug 2007

Hello, all!

Yes, I´m getting your messages - all four of them! Congrats on winning at Bingo and good fortuitousness, Bingo Lady, for tomorrow. Or maybe it was today. Also, to read your messages, you have to click on the box and pretend you´re going to leave a comment, and be logged on.

We went on a city tour today, and saw everything there is to know about Vienna. I took so many photos that I have to recharge my battery already! Haven´t used up the data card, though.

We walked around after our tour and got lost...we ended up by the Danube when we thought we were farther south on the map. It was easy to find our way back, though. After a nap, we went and visited the parliament buildings and then went to dinner.

Tomorrow our optional excursion will take us to Bratislava (in Slovak) - luckily I took the dictionary that includes a section on Slovak with me! We have the afternoon free, then we go into the countryside for a dinner with our tour.

Tomorrow it´s supposed to rain off and on but it should be OK...we had hot weather today. The only thing that went wrong today was Darrin flicked chocolate sauce at his mom after dinner when he tried to shake a fly away.

Here´s a picture - it was supposed to be of a church but I downloaded the wrong one, so it´s one of a little staircase near our hotel that I took using my mini tripod, while Darrin stood there waiting "patiently"...not!

Bye for now!

Trace

Hello, all!

I will be able to update each day here (as long as I remember that the "z" key is switched with the "y" key, and the punctuation is all in unexpected spots!) as the internet connection is free. It even has a USB port, so later this evening I´ll post some pictures.

As it turns out, we probably would have made the plane from Heathrow to Vienna, as our flight was late in leaving by almost 2 hours. The flights were fine...the second one flew low enough to see the countryside unobscured bz clouds for the entire journey. We flew over the English Channel, Belgium, and Germany. There are a lot more forests once you hit Germany! We could see the alps off in the distance once we hit Austria. By far, though, Vancouver Airport is tops when it comes to organization; both Heathrow and Vienna have an "every man for himself" policy when it comes to lines and instructions (lines? what for?). Everyone speaks English here, even the taxi drivers.

Nevertheless, we arrived at our hotel just shy of 8:00, and took a quick walk around the immediate vicinity. Vienna is a lot more built up than I thought; there are a lot of industrial areas out by the airport, and outside the "traditional" city, you see lots of graffiti. How is it that everywhere you go, graffiti artists have seemed to have gone to the same art school?! In any case, the city is extremelz clean.

We haven´t met our tour guide yet as we arrived late, but his name is Eric, and our itinerary has been posted in the hotel lobby. We met one woman from the tour already, Jerre from Oklahoma, who told us that our tour has 19 people, five of which are Canadian and the rest American. She filled us in on the scoop for the day. There is an optional excursion that leaves at 7:30, but we´ve opted out, as we thought we´d like a more relaxed start to the day. As it turns out, I was awake at 4:30 and up at 5 because of the time switch. (Imagine that, huh?!) I may has well try to stick to this schedule as it will give me time to blog, before the others wake up.

The posting times will be wrong: it´s almost 6:00 right now. I´m going to sit in the lobby and read up on some of what Wien has to offer.

How´s it going with the computer, Mom? Say hi to the bird for me! Say hi to dad, too!

Later,

Trace

We're now waiting for our flight to Vienna. If we would have stayed on our other flight, we wouldn't have made it as that flight was delayed! Got to go...time's running out on this computer.

Trace