Day 24

Wow. I can't believe I'm in Vienna!! The morning started off really well. We had breakfast at our hostel in Graz. And in case you were wondering, I did not eat a ham sandwich. They had scrambled eggs!! There was ham in it, but I didn't mind. We left the hostel and headed out into the city. The weather was already beautiful and the city was bustling with people. We walked over to the main square and saw the town hall and the other accompanying buildings. That seems to be the most interesting thing in most small cities. We walked along some of the smaller streets and then started the long climb to the Schlossberg, which is located at the highest point in Graz. Thankfully, we found a nice elevator that took us up to the top and it only cost 80 cents. Now, I know what you're thinking. Wouldn't it have been more satisfying to climb it myself? No. I think after 24 days of walking and climbing, my body has gone from being in pain, to being alright, to being used to it, to being back in pain again. So yes, we took the elevator. And it was just as satisfying. The city was beautiful and the sky was clear. We spent some time up there and even took a little break to watch the most recent episode of Dexter. We started heading back down into the city to walk by the burggarten and surrounding area. We saw some nice churches along the way, but the gardens were nothing impressive. It was time to start heading back to the train station for our trip to Mattersburg and Forchtenstein Castle. We made it with enough time to grab lunch at McD's. When we got to the platform we were very disappointed to see that our train was 25 minutes late. That was a problem. We had to make a 6 minute transfer and that would not be possible if our train was 25 minutes behind schedule. So that meant one thing. We would have to miss Forchtenstein. Very dissapointing, but we might be able to see it before we leave Vienna. Which brings me to the next part of the story. Since we couldn't go to Forchtenstein, and our train was heading for Vienna, we decided to go to.....VIENNA. That was very exciting, because I was and am looking forward to this place. We arrived a few hours later and made our way to our hostel, which, if you haven't noticed by my frequency of blog posts, has internet! No breakfast though, but I don't mind missing a few ham sandwiches. We got in around 3 so we still had enough daylight to do a few things. Our first stop was the Opera House to pick up our opera tickets! Our next stop was the Belvedere Palace. It was beautiful!! And huge. There were two separate sections and gardens in between. We spent a good hour there before heading back to the hostel to call it an early night. Our wake up call for Saturday is 4:45am...