Austria

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