Vienna
Ah! Vienna. The home of music, apparently, just so long as your definition of music doesn’t stray beyond the classical era. “But why Vienna?” I hear you say. Well, several reasons, as is often the case with my trips. They are generally trips to places that can offer a selection of things I know I’ll enjoy. In the case of Vienna, the factors in play were:
- There’s a parkrun
- There’s a shedload of geocaches
- It’s a European capital city I’d never visited
- It’s an hour from another European capital city I’d never visited (which also has loads of geocaches)
- There was a geocaching Mega-Event on the weekend I chose
- Cake
- There was that song by Ultravox in the 1980s
So that’s way more things than I would normally need to persuade me a trip is worthwhile. I set a low bar as far as places I’m prepared to visit. Quite why Vienna has escaped my attention until my 62nd year is beyond me, but that anomaly is now gone.
The Sketch
I booked this trip all as separate items. A part of that was that I saw a very good looking deal for a hotel. Vienna is generally quite expensive, so I had to go over that. But once I’d decided the total cost was acceptable, I went ahead and booked a heavily discounted deal on booking.com at the Hotel Imlauer Wien, which is up on the north side of the centre, across the Donaukanal in Leopoldstadt.
Flights were once again courtesy of BA, with a morning flight out at just after 7am, and an evening flight back at about 18:30. That kept up my theme from Oslo of getting extra days out of the “going there” and “coming back” days. Long days, but worth it for the extra time at my destination.
Travelling
The trip down was fairly uneventful until the very end. Every time this year that I’ve done these early drives to Heathrow, there’s been some reason why it’s messy. This time, the junction from the M25 onto the M4 was closed, so I had to go around to the Heathrow Terminal 5 exit and drive round the perimeter road.
That only delayed me by 5 minutes though, and I was in plenty of time.
Oh Vienna!
It definitely didn’t mean nothing to me, but whatever. Seriously though. When I got into the hotel I figured why I got a cheap deal. My room was up in the roof, and whilst it was spacious, the roof was low in much of it, and it wasn’t directly accessible – stairs were involved. It was a decent hotel though, and the rate I bought included breakfast, so I made a point of actually having some breakfast most mornings.
Weather
Generally the weather was good. I got wet on the afternoon of the day I arrived, and the rest of the time was dry, and mainly sunny. Rare weather, apparently, for Vienna in late September.
Individual Posts
So here are the individual posts for the trip, ordered from start to finish.
