(Saturday 6/30 - Sunday 7/1)
The next morning, after sleeping in until 11am (blessed), we grabbed a quick breakfast at a nearby cafe. I didn't actually eat because a few of us took longer to get ready and met the others at the cafe right as they were finishing up. At that point, we didn't really feel like sitting down and having the rest of the group wait for us, but I grabbed a few leftover raspberries off of Stephanie's plate on our way out, and they were some of the best raspberries I have ever had.
We started walking towards town and passed a vegan gelato place on our way. Naturally, Nandi got super excited, so we all made a stop at Veganista. I was surprised at how well the girl working there spoke English, and with a very light accent. It's so impressive how well other people speak English as a second language, meanwhile most of us in the United States only know very basic phrases in other language, if any at all.
The vegan ice cream was incredible! So much more than what I was expecting. I got raspberry and cashew cheesecake, and the raspberry flavor was so tart and so fresh tasting. The consistency and texture of the ice cream was also surprising, as they made it taste not at all vegan. Typically with most vegan things, especially desserts, you can definitely tell it is vegan, but with this ice cream, you could barely tell. We think it must have been made with coconut milk, due to the after taste, but I honestly don't know. It was really really good though!
After Veganista, we continued walking, and came across an interesting vintage shop. Obviously we had to go in, so we stopped to take a look around. The prices were surprisingly reasonable. I thought it might be priced a bit higher since we were in Vienna and since a lot of the thrift/vintage stores we have found so far have not been priced like the ones were are used to. Definitely not Goodwill prices. The shop did have some interesting items, like Mercedes Benz jeans, and a lot of old brightly colored windbreakers and ski coats. I have noticed that is quite a thing here in vintage and thrift shops. There is always a large section of the vintage windbreakers and full ski sets - not just the jackets but an array of brightly colored ski pants as well.
We continued on into a more typical shop for today's fashion, Blue Tomato - interesting name. They sold mostly skate gear, along with some surfing gear and apparel. They had some brands we know from home, the biggest being Vans. They also carried some brands we had never heard of, like Kappa, that seem to be a big thing over in this part of the world. I have seen many people wearing clothing with the Kappa logo, but I had never heard the name or seen any of the clothing before coming here.
We pretty much walked with no particular destination, but saw so many amazing buildings everywhere we looked. The architecture was absolutely breathtaking. I loved how they used some of the old buildings as typical things too - like one building had a McDonald's at the bottom and it provided an interesting contrast to the regal architecture of the building. It really added to the whole sophisticated and regal feel to the city, seeing such everyday things in amazing buildings.
A location we actually planned to walk to was St. Stephen's Cathedral, which was obviously also breathtaking, like the rest of the city. Also it turned out Mozart's house was right by it, like not even a block down, so we stopped by there just to check it out. Then we continued on through the city, stopping numerous times to take pictures of beautiful buildings we didn't even know the name of (they're probably not all right, but according to the location stamp on my pictures in my phone, in addition to St. Stephen's Cathedral, we also saw Der Graben, Demel Konditorei, Juedisches Viertel (a memorial to the Austrian Jews killed during World War I), Schottenkirche, and Rathauspark).
We actually wandered over to Rathauspark because there was a film festival, which had not yet started, but they had a crazy number of street vendors with all different kinds of food. I had something pretty similar to the hibachi we eat here - rice, vegetables, chicken, and it also had salmon! The salmon was surprisingly good and very well cooked, and I basically inhaled the whole plate. After eating, we went to take pictures under the building, which looked very much like a castle. We later found out it was actually their city hall!
After dinner and pictures, some of us decided to walk back to the room, while others stayed to watch whatever World Cup game was on at that time. We walked back along this river, and you could walk down some steps to the riverside, where there was so much beautiful graffiti. The graffiti lined the walls on both sides as far as you could see, and it really gave me free expression tunnel vibes.
We then returned to the room to settle down before the next early morning flight.
I'm adding it in with this blog because it didn't even feel like a new day due to like the two hours of sleep we ended up getting, but getting up that morning was absolutely awful. On the plus side, we got to see the sunrise at the airport and then I slept pretty much the whole rest of the day.
Comments