28 May (hot and sunny) 42km

Slept like logs and woke to a beautiful sunny day.  Today would be a cruisy ride into Vienna, 14km away and after breakfast we got lathered up with sunscreen and toddled off along the bike path.

A glance to the right revealed this.....!

Flat all the way and no drama to find the city centre.  We happened to look up a road and saw Stephansdom gothic cathedral so cycled up to have a closer look.  

We’ve said it before but it bears saying again.  Travelling by bike through a city is the only way to go.  Especially on a hot day.  All the other tourists (and there were plenty of them), were struggling along in the heat and we were whizzing along, breeze ruffling our hair (well, mine anyway), and getting to each destination in half the time.  

We had a map but generally just went to one tourist destination, then would see the next one was West or Southwest or whatever and follow the compass in that general direction and it was no problem.  We had a couple of rest stops, two in Macca’s for ice-cream and iced coffee, and one at a pizza place where we had a delicious spinach and feta pizza and a cold coke.

There are a lot of people in Vienna though and cycling up and down the main shopping street was quite a lot of fun, weaving in and out of them all.  It was about a km long mall with no other traffic and actually very few bikes.  I wondered if we were supposed to be there sometimes but there were other bikes doing the same thing.  We figured if anyone told us off we’d just play the ignorant tourist.  We also managed to track down some of our Primus camping gas so stocked up on that.

Schonbrunn Palace

At Schonbrunn Palace we had to leave the bikes outside and join the hordes of walking tourists – boy was that hot work!  Being Saturday, there were plenty of bridal parties coming through as they have lovely gardens with huge amounts of roses.  Not to mention those beautiful classical outdoor staircases which you really need a wedding dress on to bring to their full potential. 
Two days ago there had been a free concert in the grounds which was attended by 40,000.  All classical music and I dare say a fair bit of Mozart as this is where he came when he decided Salzburg was too small a town for him.  And yes, there is a huge difference between the two cities – Vienna is on a whole other level, but we prefer Salzburg.

Pete here:  I must admit I’m not a fan of large cities. Having lived in, what I classify a large town, for the past thirty five years,I wouldn’t want to go back to the constant hustle and bustle that goes with day to day living in that type of set up. It’s loud, it’s fast, with everyone needing to get somewhere yesterday. The amount of people in the main shopping area was insane and there must be money around, because everyone was spending it, on anything from ice-cream to food, clothes or electrical items. It would be interesting to know what tourism brings to a city like Vienna, it would be huge.

Colourful graffiti and this striking tower make an interesting sight

No it's not hail......it's dandelion seedheads!
We've never seen so many in our lives and they
have been building up in drifts over the last week.

At 4pm, we began the steady plod back to our camp, stopping on the way to pick up our tea and food for tomorrow, as the shops are closed here on Sundays. It’s a bit of a hassle as it means we have a lot more to store on that day. A welcome shower greeted us and then whilst the computer charged, we washed a few clothes over at the laundry and then made dinner.  We had a salmon omelette tonight – the first eggs we’ve had since Harald and Elvira’s place and boy was it tasty!  Ju had to go beg for some oil from the camp restaurant though as we’d forgotten to get some to cook the eggs in.  They were happy to oblige seeing as we bought two Radlers as well.  We needed them after such a stinking hot day and typically of Europe, unable to find a nice clean-looking place to swim.

So tomorrow we continue our trek down the Danube towards the Slovakian capital of Bratislava.