Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Vienna on Foot

Another unbelievably beautiful day here in Vienna! It must be somewhere around 20 degrees Celsius and not a cloud in the sky. We finally took the underground for our first time and made our way early this morning over to the Mariahilferstrasse, Vienna's longest shopping street. I spent some time in H&M and bought a couple of t-shirts and a few pairs of socks, while Peter stood outside in the sun pretending to read his new favourite crime novelist Henning Mankell. Actually I know that behind his dark glasses he was doing some major people watching! We found another British Bookshop so we couldn't pass it by and I bought The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.

We walked a little further and found oursleves in an area in which we were familiar and decided to walk through the Naschmarket, Vienna's busy outdoor flea and food market. Our tummies told us it was time for lunch so when a sweet
Asian girl stopped us and told us about
the menu in her restaurant we were ready to eat.
We sat outside in a warm place,
Peter had a cold beer and we ate some good Thai-ish chow.

I had Tom Ka Gai Soup,
creamy and delicious,


while Peter chose a bowlful of Ghana Vegies and rice.



We then walked over to the Karlskirke, which turned out to be really amazing. At first I sort of winced that there was an entrance fee of 6 Euro to a church but we went in anyway and well-- what a delight! It's a truly majestic church with a gorgeous altar. It's not a very big church area wise but it is really tall- 65 metres in fact. And the best part was the unusual elevator ride to the base of the dome. From there we climbed 5 sets of stairs and found ourselves almost able to touch the frescoes! I just loved it!

1 comment:

Ginnie Hart said...

You clearly love Vienna, T1. One of these days I want to go there. The church dome and the elevator getting up to it reminded me a bit of St. Peter's in Rome. Once you get to a certain height, you then walk the rest of the way and feel like you're next to God!