downhill, northern ireland

Sadly, in the morning we had to leave the Hilton behind. We caught a train to Castlerock, which is about 2.5 hours north of Belfast, along the very northern coast of Northern Ireland. Our destination was actually a smaller town called Downhill, where we had a hostel booked. We had to go on a bit of a trek to find it (about an hour!), but when we finally got there it was totally worth it. This hostel is definitely my favorite so far. It's literally RIGHT on the beach, underneath some cliffs. Ireland is definitely up there on my list of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It doesn't even feel like a hostel; its a house really. It's so cozy and the view from our room is awesome. There also isn't much around here, so we are able to relax instead of worrying about fitting all the sights in. After we got settled, we caught a ride into town to the grocery store with some people from our hostel that had a car. They were from France, and we did our best to communicate. Their English was not bad! We also found out that they would be heading to the Giant's Causeway the next day like we were, and could give us a ride then as well. We were so grateful because we would have had to try and figure out a bus all the way there.

When we got back from the store, we rented wetsuits and body boards from the hostel and went bodyboarding! The water was so cold, and the waves were huge.. we wouldn't have lasted more than two minutes if we didn't have those westsuits to keep us warm though. Wearing a skin tight wetsuit I wasn't too fond of, but the boarding itself was sooo awesome! We took pictures with our waterproof disposable camera, so sadly I won't be able to post any pictures of us in action.. In the evening we went for a walk along the beach and took some pictures. Mike's feet got attacked by a sniper wave and his running shoes got SOAKED, lol. The lady who runs the hostel told us a trick though - stuffing newspaper in wet shoes dries them out really quickly! We used the huge kitchen to make a hearty meal of spaghetti, chicken poppers, garlic toasties and brocolli - soo yummy!

This morning we had a nice breakfast and then headed to the Giant's Causeway with our new French friends. I guess now would be a good time to mention to two mean old ladies that are also staying here. We were eating our breakfast in the kitchen this morning as we were packing our lunches for the day, and one of them was like "there's a dining room for eating you know, you're blocking the way here" Sheesh. Then a little while later as we were still getting organized, we were by our food cubby which is by the entrance to the dining room and she was like "there you are in the way again" What a crank! Mike said to her "all you have to do is say excuse me and we can move!" Apparently they have been a real problem for the owners, they are just crabby towards everyone. The owners were even thinking about asking them to leave. They are also the reason that Mike is sleeping on the floor of a storage area tonight! When they booked, they only gave their last names and the owner assumed they were men. When they arrived they weren't pleased to find that they would be in our dorm, a mixed dorm, instead of a female only dorm. Mike was the only guy in the room, but that was still a problem for them. So there was a bit of a mix up with the bookings, and the owner offered to take us to a hostel in the next town, but we like it here so much that Mike doesn't mind the mattress on the floor!

Anyways, our ride dropped us off at the rope bridge first, which was neat but nothing compared to Lynn Canyon, lol. While we were there it started POURING rain. These storms come on so fast, it's crazy! It was soooo windy and my umbrella broke =( . Our ride had only dropped us off there and it was up to us to find our own way back along the coast to our hostel. We headed to the parking lot and approached a young couple for a ride to the next sight, the actual Giant's Causeway itself. They said sure, no problem and we were on our way. Of course it got sunny just as we were leaving!

The Giant's Causeway is a series of rock formations that are millions of years old. There are thousands of six-sided stones, all stacked around eachother, going out into the sea. It's hard to describe, but an amazing sight, so look at the pics below! The scientific explanation is that they were formed as lava cooled and cracked millions of years ago, but legend has it that it was built by a giant as a path to Scotland where an enemy giant lived. The Irish giant's wife dressed him up as a baby, and when the Scottish enemy giant came across looking for the Irish giant, the wife said he was out. The Scottish giant, seeing how big the baby was, thought the giant must be massive if his baby was that big! The Scottish giant then fled back to Scotland in fear.

Surprise surprise, while we were there it started pouring again, this time worse than the last. We caught the shuttle back to the entrance point and actually saw the French people from our hostel. We were so relieved because we thought we could just catch a ride back with them, but they had just come from and 8km hike and still had to go back and get their car somehow. We decided to head to the parking lot again. We approached a couple in a reallllly nice Land Rover, and they were able to give us a ride to Bushmills, where the distillery was. Perfect!The SUV was so nice, with tvs in the back of the headrests and really cool navigational system. It was funny, we were like ooohhh lets ask them, they have a nice vehicle! lol..

The Bushmills Distillery is the oldest Whisky Distillery in the world, from the 1600s I believe. We were going to do the tour, but decided to just check out the gift shop instead. We headed back to the parking lot to figure out the last (and longest) leg home. This is where it got interesting. Who do we see? The guy who worked the front desk of our hostel in Dublin!! What were the chances! He was more than happy to drive us right to the doorstep of our hostel. Things could not have worked out more perfectly. If we had even done one thing differently that day, like actually taken the tour for example, we never would have seen him and would probably still be stranded in Bushmills, lol. Everything happens for a reason!

Back at the hostel we talked with one of the girls who works here, Rosanna, for awhile. She and the lady who runs the hostel, Macall, are actually from Seattle. Macall met her husband here in Ireland while travelling, and now they run this hostel together. We made our dinner, the same thing we had the night before, and then talked with Macall. She told us about how they're always looking for people to come help out here, especially when they go away on vacation themselves. It was funny, it sort of felt like an informal job interview, lol. She said be sure to leave our emails so she can keep in touch. Who knows, maybe we will be the ones working here next summer!
In the morning we are catching a train to Belfast International Airport where we will be flying to Inverness, Scotland. Hopefully the weather is a little better over there!

downhill hostel

downhill hostel
Originally uploaded by backupdangit.

hostel living room

hostel living room
Originally uploaded by backupdangit.

walkway from hostel to the beach

walkway from hostel to the beach
Originally uploaded by backupdangit.

our hostel on the beach

our hostel on the beach
Originally uploaded by backupdangit.

rope bridge

rope bridge
Originally uploaded by backupdangit.

beautiful coastline

beautiful coastline
Originally uploaded by backupdangit.

giant's causeway

giant's causeway
Originally uploaded by backupdangit.

giant's causeway

giant's causeway
Originally uploaded by backupdangit.

giant's causeway

giant's causeway
Originally uploaded by backupdangit.

belfast, northern ireland

After a VERY long bus trip that lasted 11.5 hours, we finally arrived in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Our bus out of Dingle left so early, that we actually ended up not paying for our last night there because there was no one at reception to take our money!

We had a bit of a scare while we were trying to find our hostel. We were looking our guidebook, following the map and we come to where the hostel should be. Except it was all boarded up. Uh oh. How did they take our booking online if they don't even exist?! I checked my notebook where I had written down the address from the confirmation email we had gotten, and it was different. Luckily they had only moved down the street, so everything worked out!I guess the guidebook wasn't quite updated, lol. We were very tired from the trip, but wanted to walk around a bit anyways because the plan wasn't to be in Belfast for very long, maybe one night. We saw city hall and some of downtown, but didn't make it to the two streets that we wanted to. I can't remember for the life of me what they were called (I know one was Shankill), but it was getting dark and we weren't exactly sure how to get there. These are the two streets where a lot of the conflict took place in Northern Ireland, between Catholics and Protestants, etc.. It's safe nowadays, but for some reason we still felt a little uneasy about going there at night! The conflict in Northern Ireland isn't just religious, its also very political. Northern Ireland is technically part of Great Britain, and there are a lot of people who don't want it that way. Apparently the areas of those two streets are all painted (like the curbs are red, white, and blue for Great Britain in some areas), and have flags flying showing what side they support. We decided to just go back to the hostel and plan. It's hard to always be go go go all the time. You can only plan so far ahead, and then it catches up with you. Just think about how much you would have to plan for say, a one week vacation to Mexico or something. We are CONSTANTLY having to do that with each new city/country. We pretty much know the things we want to see, its co-ordinating them thats difficult. We got a lot done that night though, and decided to spend one more night in Belfast (at the Hilton because it was our 5 year anniversary!), then head up North to see the Giant's Causeway.

The next day was a bit of a splurge day, because we had reason to celebrate! I can't believe it's been 5 years for us already.. that's like a quarter of my life! We also caught a taxi to the Hilton even though we could have walked it. I can't get over how nice the taxis are here, this one happened to be a Mercedes. It felt so weird walking into a nice 5 star hotel with our packs and scruffy clothes. The room was so awesome and soo comfortable. We dropped our stuff off, then went out to the city. It was weird not having to be paranoid about leaving our stuff out on the bed or wherever. Just having that sense of personal space and security was great. We went out and did some shopping (Thanks for the new shirt and shoes honey!) and then went back to the hotel (I keep wanting to type hoStel, lol) to get ready for dinner. The shower there was wonderful - it actually had some pressure to it, what a treat! It was nice to be able to wash my hair properly and also have a tub ledge to put my shampoo and stuff on. It's funny the littlest things you take for granted, like counter space or actually having somewhere to hang your towel while you shower! I was also finally able to blow dry my hair for once! And I straightened my hair the hold fashioned way, using a clothes iron.. lol!The hotel conceirge was able to get us reservations at this restaurant called Cayenne, which was absolutely delicious! We also took a taxi back to the hotel after dinner, and the driver said happy anniversary, the trip was on him. Score!

Belfast was cool, but we didn't get to see a couple of things that we probably should have. There were those two streets I mentioned before, and I kind of wanted to go to the shipyard where the Titanic was built. The closest I got to that was taking a picture of a statue of the guy who founded the shipyards, Harland and Wolf. hahaha. Oh well.. it felt great to just take it easy. Plus I need to save some things to do for the next time I'm here, lol!

uh-oh, isn't this supposed to be our hostel?

uh-oh,. isn't this supposed to be our hostel?
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

belfast city hall

belfast city hall
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

room at the hilton

room at the hilton
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

the hilton!

the hilton!
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

dinner at cayenne

dinner at cayenne
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

dinner at cayenne

dinner at cayenne
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

dingle peninsula, ireland

In the morning we caught an early 7:30am bus to Dingle (cool name eh?!). The people at our hostel told us the wrong bus number to take to the main bus station, so the driver just took us as close as he could and we had to really hustle over to the right station. Luckily, as we always do, we made it just in time! We had to transfer in Limerick and Tralee, and altogether the trip took 7.5 hours. There were these guys on the bus that started talking to us, and one that wanted to listen to my ipod. He was so excited that there was country music on it, and he started singing along with it. That was so funny! They also asked us if we wanted to hear the Irish national anthem. We said sure, and they broke out into song. Even though they speak English here, we’ve been having difficulties understanding what people say. They speak so fast, and the accent is so different! There were also some girls from New York that overheard Mike and I talking about Tim Hortons (how we miss it!) and they were like “Did someone say Tim Hortons?” lol.. It’s funny how you hear little snippets of people’s conversations and then jump right in. Like when we were in Munich some guy heard us mention Robson street or something and he was like “Hey are you guys from Vancouver?” Turns out he was the owner of all the Knight and Day restaurants, and told us to come by for a hook up when we get back.

We arrived in Dingle with nowhere to stay, but there was a shuttle van with “Rainbow Hostel” written on it that meets every arriving bus, and luckily that hostel had room. This is also when we met Tim, a guy from Victoria who had the same backpack as Mike. Mike noticed the pack in the luggage storage under the bus as he was putting is own pack in, and he said hmm, I bet there’s someone else from Canada on this bus (because Arc’teryx is a Vancouver company). Sure enough, there was Tim, haha. The Rainbow Hostel was pretty cool. It was a farmhouse that had been turned into a hostel. There was a huge kitchen, with three cats running around and chickens in the yard. Dingle is a reallllly small town. You could probably walk from one side to the other in about 15 minutes. Our hostel was only another 15 minute walk from the main town. Once we got settled we went into town to the tourist info office, and Mike complained that it’s so much harder for him to spot me in a crowd in Ireland because I’m not the only one with red hair here! LoL.. It started raining, so we just went for dinner at Murphy’s Pub and then went back to the hostel.

Our main reason for coming to Dingle was because it was so highly recommended in the Rick Steves Best of Europe guidebook. He had a step by step (48 km!) guided bike tour of the peninsula that we really wanted to do. When we woke up the next morning it was pretty dreary, but we rented the bikes from our hostel and set out anyways. We stopped at the grocery store first though to pick up breakfast and sandwich stuff for lunch. It was just pouring rain for pretty much the first hour, and we debated turning back, but this was the main thing we came here for. We had to do it! We decided to stop in at one of the plentiful pubs, Paddy O’Shea’s, and have a Bailey’s and coffee and try and wait it out. The weather can be pretty crazy here; pouring rain one minute and hot and sunny the next. Luckily it cleared up a bit and we set back out on the road. It wasn’t long before we were soaked again, with water pouring down our faces, and my glasses so fogged I could barely see! Haha.. We realized that it just wouldn’t be a bike trip for us if something didn’t go wrong. We accepted the fact and just kept pedaling away. When we got to the first sight on the list, it actually cleared up and stayed that way for pretty much the rest of the day, and we were actually able to see the beautiful coastline. The trip around the peninsula was the closest we’ve been to home yet. I think it’s the most westerly part of Europe.
The first stop was the remains of an old medieval fortress. I can’t remember the name of it at the moment, but it was neat! There were all sorts of rock structure remains along the way. There were these things called Cochans, which were huts made out of stacked stones resembling beehives, and there were these other ones called ring forts. Ring forts are also called “fairy forts”. They are really really old, and for the longest time were never touched or excavated because of the belief that fairies lived in them. There are still some farmers today that are superstitious about them. There were tales of farmers plowing them in their fields by mistake and then having bad luck.

The road along the Peninsula, Slea Head Drive, was very windy and narrow in some points. At about the halfway point, there was this big tour bus that caused a major traffic jam. This part of the road around the bend happened to be one way, and there was a bit of a pull out that he should have taken to let some of the other oncoming cars pass. He didn’t though, so the oncoming cars all had to slowly reverse along the road to the previous pull out point so the bus could pass. It was quite the sight to see! Luckily we were able to just zip by on our bikes, haha. It was kind of raining off and on again, so we used that as an excuse to stop at a café for some hot chocolate and cake. The cake was amazing! Mike had this strawberry one and I had the chocolate. They were huge, and we could barely finish them.

We set back out, and it started to get really sunny, hot almost! We came to this huge hill that we stopped at to climb up for a little detour. It was sooo cool. There were sheep EVERYWHERE, just roaming about and doing their thing. We were able to get really close to some and get some good pictures. All you could hear were the sheep munching on the grass. The views from the hill were amazing. The whole Dingle Peninsula was sooo beautiful, with the greenest hills and fields you’ve ever seen. It was so peaceful too, just riding along with sheep baaa-ing and cows mooooing at you as you passed.

The last leg of the trip was brutal, it was totally uphill. We walked it, and even that was tough. Luckily when we got to the top it was an easy 3 mile coast all the way back into Dingle Town (lol, I can’t get over that name!). We arrived back just as it was getting dark. Rick Steve’s said the tour would be a demanding three hours, but with the weather, our side trips, and our few stops, it took us more like around 10 hours. It was well worth it though, and one of my favourite things we’ve done so far! Back at the hostel we ate our picnic lunch for dinner. We were too full from our two stops to even bother eating it as a lunch..

The next day was meant just to be a relaxing one. We went into town and also did the pitch and putt golf course. At one of the holes I got stuck in the sandtrap, and it took me FOREVER to get my ball out.. grrr.. In the evening we had some major planning to do, because we were leaving in the morning and didn't even know where we were going! We decided that we would take a bus all the way up to Belfast, even though it meant we would spend the whole day travelling. That was the only thing about Dingle, it was waaay on the west coast, which meant it would be a long ride no matter where we wanted to go from there. Once we were done with that (a few frustrating hours later), we met Tim and another guy Morgan at one of the pubs in town. It was or first time going to a proper Irish pub at night, and they had the music going and everything; it was great! So lively.. there were people dancing as well. We were pretty tired, but we couldn't leave Ireland without going to a pub with Irish music at least once!The walk back to the hostel seemed to take forever in the dark, but it was beautiful.. the sky was actually clear and just filled with stars..

in a clochan

in a clochan
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

awww

awww
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

weeee!

weeee!
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

traffic jam

traffic jam
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

remains of a house

remains of a house
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

coastline of dingle

coastline of dingle
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

hanging out with the sheep

hanging out with the sheep
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

almost home

almost home
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

dingle bay

dingle bay
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

sunrise as we were leaving dingle

sunrise as we were leaving dingle
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

dublin, ireland

After a short 2.5 hour flight, we had arrived in Dublin, Ireland. We claimed our bags no problem, and caught the bus into town. It was so weird to drive on the other side of the road! Everything is backwards; the driver's seat is on the other side and it was so weird getting in on the opposite side of the bus. And it felt totally bizarre going through all the roundabouts "backwards". We thought about renting a car in Ireland, but I don't think I could drive here. I'm sure I would pull out onto the wrong side of the road and get in a head on collision or something.. plus all the cars are standard here, and I couldn't imagine shifting gears with my left hand! Once we got to the hostel, I gave Jay a call, who was staying with some of his family in Bangor, near Belfast. We finalized our plans for the next day when he was going to take a bus down to Dublin and meet us. I was able to make him a reservation at our same hostel, in the same room even, which was cool. It took me forever to get through to him though, because I hate how the phone numbers work here! It can be quite confusing. Depending on where you are and where you are calling to, you sometimes add digits or leave digits out of the phone number. I finally found the right combination though!

For dinner that night we made, wait for it…. PASTA! We also bought a couple of cans of Guinness, which I knew I wouldn’t like, but had to try because it’s Ireland for pete’s sake! Guinness is the blackest, heaviest beer..so nasty! I couldn’t get through the can. After dinner we just walked around. Our hostel was in a great location, right near the downtown Temple Bar district. Every second building is a pub, and there are tons of drunk people stumbling around everywhere. I’ve never seen so many splats of barf along the sides of buildings in my life! We went to bed pretty early, because we had been up till about 5am the night before at Mike’s cousin’s house in Vienna, doing our laundry, calling home, and doing planning. I was also blogging, lol. It’s such an effort to keep this thing up! I think Mike may have even given up on his, lol. I went to bed before Mike, and when Mike came in the room to go to his bed, there was someone else in it! hahah, he woke him up and said "uh, this is my bed", and the guy was like "yea but someone is in MY bed". There was a free bed and the guy asked Mike if he had a preference, and Mike was like "yes, I'd like my bed with all my stuff around it..please move" hahah..sheesh!

We slept in a bit the next morning, because we were tired and because we knew Jay wasn’t arriving till the afternoon anyways. This was also when we realized that we had undergone a time change! I was like why do all the computers here say the wrong time? *CLICK* oh yeahhhh.. They’re only 8 hours ahead of Vancouver here, instead of 9. When Jay got there, we caught up for a bit then went and did a tour of Trinity College and their library, which houses the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is what they call an illuminated manuscript. It’s made completely of vellum (calf skin), which is kind of iridescent by nature. It’s a book written by monks from the dark ages, containing the four gospels. It was really neat - all of the drawings and writing were so detailed and fancy. It must have taken forever to complete! It was absolutely pouring that day, which made the walking tour interesting! Lol. We didn’t feel like sightseeing in the rain after that, so we went to see a movie (Miami Vice) It was alright. For dinner we went to the grocery store and bought stuff for a stirfry. Mike was busy making phone calls, while Jay and I cooked. He came back downstairs just as it was ready – how convenient! Hahah.. It was so delicious! We also had the bottle of wine that Mike’s cousin had given us as we were leaving Vienna. After dinner Mike had some more phone calls to make, and Jay and I went for a little walk. It was weird, it felt like we were hanging out back at home, but we were in DUBLIN – crazy!

The next day we didn’t really know what to do, it seemed like the main attraction of Dublin was its pubs and nightlife. We all took a train to a suburb of Dublin, called Blackrock. There was this market thing there which we explored for a while. The town was quite small though, so there wasn’t much to do other than that! When we got back to Dublin, it had miraculously stopped raining for a while. That was good because we didn’t have much to do except walk around! We stumbled across this REALLY bizarre street performance art thing. I really don’t think words can describe it! Its theme was something hippy dippy like man’s struggle against environment or something like that, lol. There was no dialogue, just people using weird props. We also went to a photography exhibit because it was free. For dinner we went to this 50’s style burger joint called Eddie Rocket’s for some delicious burgers, and after that Jay caught his bus back to Belfast. Mike and I just walked around that night and took some pictures. We also made our plans for the next day when we would be catching a bus to the Dingle Peninsula.

lol

lol
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

in blackrock

in blackrock
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

me and jay

me and jay
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

so the tourists don't get confused?

so the tourists don't get confused?
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

view from the hostel

view from the hostel
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

guiness

guiness
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

temple bar district

temple bar district
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

mike sleeping like a baby

mike sleeping like a baby
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

arriving in dublin

arriving in dublin
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

vienna, austria

When we arrived in Vienna, Mike's cousin Fred and his brother in law Oliver were waiting for us. Mike's cousin (from his dad's side this time) did the travelling around Europe thing like 15 years ago, and he met a girl here in Vienna and now this is where he lives! Oliver gave us a quick tour around town, and then we headed to Fred's apartment where we met his wife, Gueny. We got our things settled, then went into town with Oliver and Fred for some beer/wine and another little quick tour by foot. By then it was quite late, so we headed home and went to sleep.
We slept on the pull-out couch in the living room, and in the (early!) morning we were woken by their kids Carl (4 years old), and Matthias(2 years old) peeking around the corner at us and giggling. Fred and Gueny also have a 3 month old daughter named Lina. All three are so adorable! Carl and Matthias speak both English and German and we are so jealous of them! hahaah.. It's so cute, sometimes they will speak some German words and some English words in the same sentence. After breakfast we all headed to Shonbrunn, which was the Hapsburgs' Palace, and the Palace grounds and the surrounding park. It was a bit of a rainy day, but everything still looked so beautiful! We were going to go to the Zoo, but it was a holiday that day, and the lines to get in were crazy! Mike did a good job at getting Matthias and Carl all worked up at the park (and for some reason they started calling me Murphy, haha)

At the park we met Oliver again and he took Fred, Mike and I into the Vienna Woods where we went to this cafe that had a great view and had sachertorte (chocolate cake) and coffee, two things that Vienna is famous for. They were both delicious! Afterwards, we went to pick up Oliver's son, Phillip and we went for lunch at a heurigen (wine garden). There are all sorts of heurigen throughout the woods, each bottles their own type of wine from their vineyards out back; which equals low cost wine! Mike and I played it safe and ordered the chicken schnitzel, but Fred ordered chicken liver and Oliver ordered cow's tongue. I don't know how, but we ended up trying a bit of both of their dishes. The chicken liver was the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted, and I literally almost threw up. I really had to concentrate on keeping it down and breathing deeply after that. The cow tongue tasted surprisingly kind of like ham which was weird because it was beef! hmm.. The hardest part was getting over the mental fact that you were eating a piece of COW TONGUE. It actually looked like tongue on Oliver's plate too, you could tell it was a big fat tongue cut up into slices, tastebuds and everything. I wouldn't eat it again, but next to the chicken liver it tasted like the most heavenly candy you could imagine. That's how nasty the liver was!

That night they were celebrating Carl's birthday, so we went home and had some more cake! In the evening Fred took Mike and I back into town for a proper night tour and for some awesome gelato from a place called Zinoni's. We ended our tour in front of City Hall at the Rathaus Park. There is a huge screen and chairs set up there, where each night this month they show either an opera or a concert; two more things Vienna is famous for. It was free, which was awesome.. because a proper opera could be quite expensive. I can't remember what it was called at the moment, but we saw one of Mozart's operas.

The next day was another early morning, and Mike and I went into town on our own for a while. We first took the bus to Mariahilferstrasse which is a big shopping street where we bought blank DVDs to burn all of our pictures onto, and portable memory sticks so we can easily transfer things (like my blog and pictures!) from Mike's laptop to public computers if need be. I also bought some cat treats, because we are always running into stray cats and have nothing to coax them over with! lol..

After the shopping we went to the Belvedere Museum, which features works like The Kiss by Gustav Klimt and pieces by Egon Schiele. I don't know if I've just grown a better appreciation for art by now, but the Belvedere was probably my favorite art museum yet. There were a lot of really great pieces, but I didn't have my notebook with me to write down some of the artists' names. I tried to remember them best I could, but of course now I can't remember them! I'll have to google the museum later and try and get a listing of their collection. Fred met us at the museum once we were done, and he showed us the Hundertwasserhaus, which is this crazy, artistic multi-colored apartment building. Hunderwasser was an artist and he faught for each tenant to have the right to decorate the outside of their window, within one arm's length, any way they wanted. He has also designed other funky buildings around the world. Google him for a better idea or what his style was like! We then walked through another park, ending up at The Prater which is a huge amusement park. One of the ferris wheels there is quite famous, and was used in the film The Third Man. I didn't get a picture of it though because my camera battery died, dangit.

For dinner we went to a place called Centimeter, where you can order food like bread by, you guessed it, the centimeter! I was happy to see Radler on the menu, which is the type of beer I had at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich that has part lemonade in it. It tastes so good! We all had normal food this time, so there was no gagging, which is always nice.

This morning was a pretty lazy one. We have been soooo busy the last couple of days that we wanted to just take some time to relax and get some things done like burning our pictures to cd and blog! It's around 130am, and I've been working on the blog in bits all dang day. It really takes a lot of time, especially when you are 3 cities behind! hahaha.. Around 5 Mike and I tried giving the zoo another go, but it closed at 630 and even the ticket lady told us it wouldn't be worth it because we would be too rushed. That kinda sucked. I would have liked to see all the animals and this zoo is the oldest in Europe. It cost 10 Euros though, so it really wouldn't have been worth it to go for only one hour. Instead we went to Naschmarkt, which is this big outdoor market selling all sorts of trinkets and ethinc foods and spices. They were also closing up, but we still managed to see the whole thing. We then met Fred in front of St. Stephen's Cathedral, which is what the whole city is situated around. It was another beautiful chuch! There was another mass in progress, so we were only allowed in around the back area. We didn't really want to make it a late night, so then we just went to one of the famous cafes in the area, Cafe Diglas for some of their cake and coffee. I had this delicious chocolate banana cake and Mike had the sachertorte again.

I've really loved Vienna, and It's definitely one of my most favorite cities so far. There is such a great combination of beautiful old buildings, little cafes, great cultural things like operas and museums, and tons of big open green parks at the same time. It's a place I could picture myself living for a while or at least coming back and spending longer.

*Sigh* Well I think I'm pretty much caught up now! Yaaaay! These last 3 days have been CRAZY busy. Tomorrow morning we are catching a flight to Dublin, Ireland. I think we will spend around 1 week in Ireland then go on to Scotland and England. Jay is also in Ireland right now, and we are trying to arrange to meet up, probably on Saturday. He is near Belfast and is going to train down to Dublin I think. It'll be cool to see a familiar face from home!

<3 shanon

hofburg (imperial palace)

hofburg (imperial palace)
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

schonbrunn

schonbrunn
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

schonbrunn gardens

schonbrunn gardens
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

schonbrunn

schonbrunn
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

rathaus opera at city hall

rathaus opera at city hall
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

belvedere museum

belvedere museum
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

hundertwasserhaus

hundertwasserhaus
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

lina

lina
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

carl and matthias

carl and matthias
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

mike and fred

mike and fred
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

stephensdom cathedral

stephensdom cathedral
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

salzburg, austria

When we arrived in Salzburg it was late and we just caught the bus to our hostel right away. It was massive and was almost like a hotel. It was probably one of my most favorite so far - we had proper blankets that were like duvets, nice pillows, and a realllly awesome buffet breakfast. It was very cozy and comfortable. Salzburg is where parts of The Sound of Music was filmed, and that's one of the city's main claims to fame (along with being Mozart's birthplace). Every night at 8 o'clock our hostel would have screenings of the movie, lol.

When we got up in the morning we walked all around the Old Town. In terms of sightseeing, there isn't a whole lot to see in Salzburg, it's just a nice place to stroll around and kind of relax. I guess that's why they cling so hard to The Sound of Music and Mozart! There were even stores full of these Mozart chocolates in all sorts of different packaging, along with all sorts of varieties of Mozart Cafes and the like. We walked up the Castle hill for the view, but didn't tour the inside. There was also a really beautiful church there, and when we entered there was a mass in progress. I wish I had known what time it started at, because I would've liked to have attended the whole thing. We just stayed and listened to the choir for a little while before heading back to the hostel.

In the morning we made a day trip to the ice caves in the nearby town of Werfen. We left our packs at the train station in a locker and just picked them up later when we returned to catch our train to Vienna. Werfen was only about 40 minutes away by train, and it was really easy to get there. I love how convenient and easy it is to get around here. Even though we had to catch an afternoon train from Salzburg to Vienna, it was no problem to make a side trip to Werfen first. From the train station in Werfen we caught shuttle bus part way up the mountain, had to hike for 20 minutes, caught the cable car higher up the mountain, then had to hike another 20 minutes further up. There were no English tours, but our guide put us up at the front, and would give us our own private explanations in English in between the German ones. He also let us take pictures even though we weren't supposed to! The ice caves were really awesome, and freeeeezing cold! There's not much more I can say about them to describe them other than that they were massive caves made of ice, so I'll let the pictures below do the talking! LoL.. The entrance to the cave was first discovered in the late 1800's, and I can't imagine how difficult that must have been in terms of how shoddy the mountaineering equipment must have been back then. The caves themselves are estimated to be between 40 and 60 million years old, and in some parts you can actually see how the ice is layered, in the same way that a tree has age rings. There were also parts where there were narrow tunnels with wind rushing through against us because of the different elevations and slight temperature variations. It was really neat. We were lucky we got there early because the lines for the cable car up were a lot longer as we were leaving and we might have ended up missing our train. After the hike down on the way to the parking lot there was this family heading up, and the daughter who must have been around 5 or 6 was just SCREAMING and whining for her mom to pick her up and carry her (the trail was quite steep). We thought it was funny because that was only the beginning! There was still another hike and then the actual hike through the caves.. I felt sorry for whoever was on her tour!, hahaha.. We caught the shuttle back to the train station and made our way to Salzburg where we caught the train to Vienna.

salzburg

salzburg
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

salzburg

salzburg
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

climbing castle hill

climbing castle hill
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

mozart and mike

mozart and mike
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.

entrance to the ice caves

entrance to the ice caves
Originally uploaded by shanonv123.