June 3, 2012

Today we woke up and met in the hotel lobby.  We were told that we were going on a 10 kilometer nature walk today, which equates to about 7 miles.  We took a couple of trains down to an enormous park and walked around for a couple of hours, probably not the whole 10 km.  While we were walking we were surrounded by a race of some sort, it was a bunch of women doing like a 10 k race.  After the walk we ate with about 10000 other people.  It was a big opening with food stands, a band, and a bunch of picnic tables.  A few of us went to an amusement park that we saw and we rode a swing ride that went about 100 feet in the air, we were able to get a great view of Vienna and the surrounding countryside.  The next ride was called the Black Mamba and it was one of the more intense roller coasters I have ever been on.  I unknowingly had my phone in my front pocket and when I got off the roller coaster I did not have it.  This coaster was so intense; my phone was probably 300 yards away shattered.  I called it using someone else’s phone and it went straight to voicemail, so it definitely fell out and is in a million pieces somewhere in Vienna.  Brady, Jack, Dave, Sumner, and I walked around some more and eventually went back to the hotel.  I relaxed a little today and went and got some dinner at the same schnitzel place from the first day.  I came back and got “Act of Valor” from Jack which was a very good movie.  I watched it and fell asleep early.  No pictures today because they were on my phone. Check back tomorrow.

T

June 2, 2012

Today we met in the lobby of the hotel at 8.30, and left at 9.00.  I actually did wake myself up today, thinking I would sleep through an alarm; I got two wake up calls.  This morning we did another bike tour, similar to the one in Barcelona.  We were riding brand new bikes, we watched them take the wrapping off, so they were nice.  They were cruiser bikes and I didn’t get a hundred yards and I ran over something and slashed the back tire.  I’m sure they weren’t too happy about a blown tire on a BRAND new bike, oh well.  We rode around Vienna for three and a half hours and saw some amazing spots within the city.  The architecture of Vienna’s buildings is incredible, there is nothing like it in the states.  The style of architecture is called borough architecture.  After the tour we were done for the day.  Dave, Brady, Jack, Sumner, and I went to a restaurant that I can’t remember the name of.  It was a very traditional Austrian restaurant and I got potato goulash with spicy sausage, I could definitely get used to Austrian food, it was great.  We went to the train station and reserved a sleeper cabin for our train going from Amsterdam to Munich.  We did this because we didn’t want another experience like the other one, and this trip is going to be about four hours longer.  Brady, Jack, and I got a three person cabin for 50 euros each; it is going to be well worth every penny.  I went back to the hotel because I was wearing my last set of clothes; I did some laundry that took forever and was expensive.  I came back to the hotel and worked on blogs and emailing some contacts.  Later I met up with Brady, Jack, Dave, Sumner, and a few others.  We went to a very local, hole in the wall, restaurant.  There were no English menus or anyone who spoke English.  I guessed and got a rice dish with a type of sausage… again, it was very good.  We had met up with two brothers that went to UGA and they came to dinner with us.  That night we went out to a club called U4, I didn’t get in because I looked too American.  I was wearing khaki shorts an under armour collared shirt, and flip flops… I just went back to the hotel and called it a night.

T

June 1, 2012

That train was terrible.  There were six of us in an extremely small cabin.  There were three bunks on each side that were maybe two feet wide, not very big for a guy my size.  On top of the sardine style cabin, there was no air condition for the first six hours of the ride, so we were sweating pretty profusely.  We finally made it to Vienna, ten hours later.  We came to the hotel and dropped our luggage off in some rooms.  We are staying in the Courtyard Marriott here in Vienna, and it is by far the nicest hotel we have stayed in, it’s great.  It gets better, we have an odd number of guys and apparently there are only single and double rooms here and I got a room to myself.  I have a king bed and plenty of space.  It will be good to have this room for a couple of days.  We met back up and walked down through the Schonbrunn gardens to the Schonbrunn palace, it is the palace where all of Austria’s kings have lived.  We walked up an enormous hill to a monument that overlooked the entire city of Vienna.  We were released for the day at this point and told to meet back up at 7.00 tonight.  Sumner, Morgan, and I went looking for food and found the best deal I’ve seen so far.  We paid five euros for fries, drink, and schnitzel burger.  I didn’t know what schnitzel was but figured I would try it.  I still didn’t know what it was while eating it; apparently it is just thin strips of chicken fried in batter.  It was very good.  We had the afternoon off and we met up at 7.00 PM in the hotel lobby.  We went to downtown Vienna and walked the main street there, which is now a pedestrian walkway only.  We saw many street performers; the coolest ones were the break dancers and the saxophone quartet. We finished walking down the street and were released for the night when we had seen most of downtown.  Anoop suggested that we try a restaurant called Weinerwald, Wiener World, and a few people got some chuckles out of that.  It was a local Austria style restaurant that had all kinds of schnitzel.  I was all schnitzeled out from lunch so I ended up getting chicken wings; I know that’s getting real crazy.  We found an Australian pub and went there thinking that the people there would speak English.  There were English speaking people there, but they weren’t Australian.  Some were Irish, South African, and a few Australians.  We had a beer or two and I went home, that train ride had me exhausted.  That’s it for today.

T

May 31, 2012

Today we met outside the hotel at ten o clock.  We went and found a water taxi and traveled across the bay to Lido Island.  Once we got to the island we hopped on a bus traveled about 45 minutes to a beach.  We were dropped off at the end of the island and basically done for the day at this point.  We just hung out on the beach, kind of like what we do in Destin or Panama City.  This was a strange beach; there were hundreds of little bodegas for people to rent for the day, but other than us there was only like five people on the beach.  We finally found a volleyball and got in one game before we had to leave.  We came back to the hotel and were told that the train leaves at nine and we need to be on it.  I walked over to San Marco square and found a really cool painting on canvas, I’m pretty sure I got a good deal on it.  Six of us opted out of carrying our luggage all the way to the train station; we got a private water taxi to pick us up and drop us off.  We got there at 7.45 and our train wasn’t until 9.00.  Little did we know we would soon wish we were still waiting outside with fresh air. I don't have any pictures for today, my camera was dead, check back tomorrow.

T

May 30, 2012

Today we met outside the hotel at ten o clock.  We went to Insula, which is a city preservation construction company.  They work on preserving the canals, bridges, and buildings throughout Venice.  While they do preservation work, they also to repairs on sections of canals and bridges whenever they need them.  We were release for the day after this, it was about noon. Some people got lunch at a grocery store, it didn’t look good, so I opted for a piece of pizza instead.  Sumner, Brady, Jack, and I walked back to the hotel, it took us a while.  We got lost for about an hour and a half, but we finally figured it out. We went out again, Sumner and I went to the UPS store, Sumner had to ship some stuff back.  It is pretty pricy, 86 euro for 3 kg worth of stuff.  We walked around and found the Rialta bridge and found some pretty cool shopping around the area.  We eventually made it back to the hotel and I caught up on some blogs and booked my room for Amsterdam.  I paid for Joel and myself and it was only 230 euro for three nights, he is paying me back.  We are staying in a dorm style room with 10 beds in there, it should be interesting.  Hopefully we all get in one room, that probably will not happen though.  Morgan, Sumner, Kyle, Cameron, and myself decided to rent a private taxi boat and get dropped off way up the canal somewhere, not exactly planned out the best. The taxi was extremely nice though, wooden boat with leather seats.  We got dropped off at a park and hung out there for a while.  We had a hike to get back to the place, but eventually figured it out.  We hung out at the hotel and got caught up on some work I needed to do.  That's all for today.

T

May 29, 2012

Today was almost really bad for Dave and I.  The hotel rooms require that you have a card inserted in the wall for the power to work in the room (lights, outlets, TV).  Well we got back last night and forgot to put it in the wall, so our phones died. We were supposed to meet outside the hotel at 9.00 because we had a ten o clock train.  We woke up at 9.40… luckily we were already packed and we booked it to the train station.  We barely made it.  We got there, luckily found the group, and hopped on the train just in time.  The train was three hours and we were in Venice.  We split up into two groups, one went one way the other went the another.  My group made it to the meeting spot first and eventually the other group did too.  We checked into the hotel and had the day off until 8.00.  We went over to….square and just hung out for a few hours.  We came back to the hotel for a little while and met back downstairs at 8.00.  As a group we walked back over to where we had been all day.  We just walked around and checked out the town, Venice is a beautiful city.  We were released for the day and we continued to just walk around and check everything out.  Eventually we found an American bar and I’m pretty sure the entire group was in there.  It was pricy though so we weren’t there long.  We came back to the hotel, got a little ice cream, and called it a night.

T