Traveling Tuesday: Vienna, Austria

Welcome to the grand debut of...

Traveling Tuesday!

I snapped this picture of Brandon as he took in his first sight of Europe - St. Stephen's Cathedral.

I am so excited to kick off this new weekly feature!! After returning from our fairytale trip I have so many stories and pictures and amazing things to show you and tell you about... I knew one post, or two, or even three, wouldn't do it justice.

We inadvertently happened to go inside St. Stephen's Cathedral at exactly the right time.
The sun was coming through the stained glass and casting beautiful shades of pink, purple, blue and green
all over the inside of the magnificent building. It was truly a magical experience!

So instead of cramming pictures down your throat for several days, I decided to start Traveling Tuesdays where each week I'll show you some pictures and tell you some stories of our grand adventures! The pictures won't necessarily go with the stories because otherwise you'd be reading the equivalent of a history book. Instead, I'll tell you about our adventures in each place and supplement with pictures of the area. I hope you enjoy this new little feature!

Super cute crowns were EVERYWHERE... but none for sale. Whomp whomp.
This was on the "free" fountain that we viewed right before hitting the jackpot!

We will eventually make our way across Austria and Switzerland, but today we are kicking off this party in the place we spent our first few days abroad -

VIENNA, AUSTRIA!

Our traveling schedule getting to Europe wasn't exactly ideal, but you take what you can get when you are flying free with frequent flier miles! We headed to Dallas Friday night after celebrating at Brandon's cousin's wedding. Of course, we failed to leave the wedding as early as we intended because we were having fun... And we (cough, mainly me, cough) failed to get completely packed before the wedding so we had to swing back by the house... 

Hofburg's Palace was giant and right in the middle of the square... We purchased tickets to visit "The Hofburg Treasury" where they display all the crowns and jewels and pretty girl stuff, but we missed it by 30 minutes. Oops.

To make a long story short we left OKC for Dallas at 11:30pm which means we didn't get to the hotel until 2:30am and we had to leave the hotel for the airport at 4:30am. The fact that we made it to Dallas without wrecking the car was a mere miracle in itself! (We switched drivers literally four times...)

After traveling for over 24 hours (13 in the air, 13+ in layovers) we decided to spend two nights in beautiful Vienna to rest, relax and get our feet back under us. 

Precious hubby had all the fun he could stand on Day 1 and was out for the count at 7:26 pm. 

Travel Tip #1: When traveling in Europe, don't take cash, use your debit card! For one, if your purse/wallet gets stolen and all you have is cash, you are out of luck. For two, you will have to exchange the US dollars to Euro, Pound, Francs, etc and regardless of where you take the money there will be an exchange fee. Banks have the lowest exchange fees, but you have to go when the bank is open which can be more difficult than expected. SO, notify your bank before you travel and then use your debit card to make a withdrawal for a couple hundred every few days. The ATM will give you money in the correct currency and the fee, at least from my bank, was a flat $1 versus a percentage. Never the less, always stick a credit card in for back up just in case!

I loved these cute pots of flowers spicing up this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant.
From what I can tell, the "pots" are just big cans that the paper has been stripped off of! Cute and affordable!!

Not everything went as planned however... like our debit cards not allowing us to make a withdrawal. When we arrived in Vienna we were exhausted, starving, lost, carrying incredibly over-packed bags and had zero money. 

Belvedere's Palace... Super honest moment: Wasn't overly impressed

I have traveled all over Europe using my debit card and for the life of me, I could not get an ATM to give us a dime! I could see in Brandon's eyes that he was trying his best not to panic, but in his head he was clearly screaming, "You told me you knew what you were doing and I didn't need to worry about anything and now we have no room, no money and nobody speaks our language!" I knew I contacted the bank before I left... I even bought a train ticket with the card earlier to get from the airport into town, but now that we were trying to find a room to ditch the 55lb bags and take off my cute, but completely unpractical wedges... nothing, nada, zilch. 

Karlskirche Church. One of Brandon's favorites because it was under construction
so we were able to ride an elevator to the top of the dome then climb a whole bunch of scaffolds
 until we could actually touch the paintings! It was pretty amazing...

We eventually caved and used our golden save-the-day credit card to rent us an incredibly overpriced room close to the town square - it included free wifi, breakfast and there was a cute little chandelier over our bed so I wasn't complaining. I quickly popped open the iPad and shot an email to my mom to tell her to go to the bank first thing the next morning and get them to take the hold off my card, a facebook message to my brother to tell him to tell mom to check her email asap and another email to my best friend at home who happens to be my personal banker to tell her I was having some problems that needed to be resolved in a hurry. 

Naschmarkt. A gigantic farmer's market outside of the Vienna square.
A friend of mine from Germany recommended the roast beef at this little shop and he did not lead us astray!

After freaking everyone back home out completely, B and I headed towards the square to check out the sites (only the free ones though because we couldn't pay to actually go in anything). 

Schonbrunn's Palace... Super honest moment: Far exceeded expectations!

While we were stopped looking at a fountain (free) we saw one more ATM and decide to give it a try, what could it hurt at this point? This particular ATM didn't allow you to withdraw as much money as the other ones and so instead of asking for 400Euro, we selected 300Euro. And guess what, it gave us MONEY!! 

The Schonbrunn's have my dream backyard... Look at those gardens!! They went on and on in every direction!

Apparently, the whole time I was trying to withdraw more than my daily limit because I wasn't converting the math correctly. Genius, I know. I wish we could have had a video of the happy dance that ensued... 

Flowers and gardens and fountains...
I was pretty much thinking I had died and gone to Heaven!

We definitely made the most of our two days in Vienna. We hit every hot spot in the book... 


Travel Tip #2: Don't even think about leaving home without purchasing a Rick Steves' Travel Guide. My "boyfriend Rick" as he is affectionately known in the King household, will save you time, money and a lot of headaches. His books have easy to read maps, incredibly helpful tips on eating/sleeping/sites, and step by step walking tours that allow you to see all the sights in an efficient manner! Basically, it's everything you need to know about anything. I LOOOOVE boyfriend Rick... Brandon thinks he is great too.

Our filthy, hot, tired, swollen and thanks to those cute little black flats, blistered feet!
We did a LOT of walking that day and because of the awful blister, this was the last day I was able to wear any shoe other than flip flops... which got pretty interesting when we were hiking in the Alps!

 We visited St. Stephen's Cathedral (a-mazing during sunset), the Opera (opera isn't our thing so we just walked by), Hofburg Palace (spent a lovely afternoon sitting in one of the many parks here), Kunsthistorisches Museum (lotttts of marble in this place... Just give it a so-so), Schonbrunn Palace (wayyy better than the book gave it credit for... wear your walking shoes), Belvedere Palace (overrated, if I had to pick one I'd pick Schonbrunn), Karlskirche (incredible fresco painted ceiling), Naschmarkt (fun place to grab a quick bite).

BK's first hostel - See it's not that bad!

 While exploring, I saw this little restaurant tucked in a vine covered building and decided we should have dinner there. Oh, what a lucky find! This restaurant, Griechenbeisl (at least that's what I think the letters said), was Austria at it's finest. My version of "finest" is not a table with more forks than I can identify or food that comes out in bite size fancy servings... In my book "finest" means local. I want to eat like the people in Vienna eat. I want to experience the culture, the true surroundings. You will not catch ever me in a McD's while vacationing. Griechenbeisl far exceeded my expectation!

My favorite restaurant on the trip: Griechenbeisl (or something like that)

As you can see, the restaurant was decked in dark carved wood and antiques, but the best part was right through that little door... In the room adjoining us was a man playing an accordion and about 40 locals crammed around a few large tables singing, clapping and dancing along! I could have sat there all night just taking in the sounds! 

An entire plate of wiener-schnitzel. Basically chicken fried steak but with lamb meat.

 Our food was delicious - BK had the schnitzel and I had a hearty potato soup. After we finished eating and the crowd in the next room started to dissolve, our waiter encouraged us to explore the restaurant. The building dates all the way back to 1350 and each room had the rich feel of Vienna - dark colors, friendly chatter and music. There was a piano room, where an older woman was "tickling the ivories" and my favorite, an autograph room. In the mid-1800s the owner created Pilsner Urquell beer. Because of this special beer, the Griechenbeisl became the meeting place for numerous prominent artists, scholars and politicians. All the way around the room the top half of the wall had been painted a dark golden tan and over the hundreds of years the little restaurant had been open famous artists and politicians from all parts of the world have signed their names on the walls of this room!

In the middle, the dark looong scribbled name belongs to Mozart.
A little further up and more to the right you will find Mark Twain's signature and above that Barry Manilow.
We also saw Beethoven and Johnny Cash, among other notable signatures!

This was definitely a restaurant I would recommend! The atmosphere alone was worth the visit! Vienna did not disappoint! It's a beautiful city full of amazing sites and sounds. 


I hope you enjoyed checking out Vienna... We have hundreds of pictures and trying to cut it down to just the highlights is a daunting task as I eliminated so many incredible places and sights. Next week I'll show you the storybook town of Halstatt, my personal favorite in all of Austria!


Be Blessed!
Raegan