We Have Arrived in Austria – Day 1

Celebrating 25 years of marriage 4 years late can be pretty nice, too and that’s exactly what we’re doing. We have embarked on an anniversary getaway/adventure to Austria. Neither one of us has ever been here, so it’s all going to be new and exciting.

The beginnings of our trip did not lead us to think it would be any different than other vacations we have taken in the past. There’s always plenty of adventure and uncertainty to be had. Forrr surrreee.

Back to the beginning of our trip – while still in Arizona.

It was a nice change to fly out at a reasonable hour. We arrived at the airport about 9:30am. Russell seemed to be feeling anxious that we might be running late as evidenced by the way he was rushing around. I was the recipient when I didn’t watch him closely enough and walked under the back hatch of the Suburban to get something and he started to close it. Bang it came down on my head and exclamations were uttered as he wondered if he had done great damage to myself. I assured him I was okay and we continued on.

The first leg of our trip was from Phoenix to Houston. The thought struck me that this would be my last opportunity to have some American food. I know Austria is supposed to be tasty but no American!? Not having any for 10 days struck me as rather alarming. I mean, even London’s food, as much as they may seem to be the same as the US…… their food is still different.

We grabbed ourselves a burger before we boarded our plane to London, a flight that lasted a little over 9 hours which thankfully wasn’t full so so we had a 3 seat row to ourselves.

We arrived in London about 7:30 am where we caught our final flight to Vienna, Austria. There was classical music playing as we boarded the plane. The colors for Austrian airlines is grey and red and I thought it was cute how they had red and white checked ties for the curtains that separate 1st class from those in the economy section. The flight attendants were all dressed in the company’s bright red color.

Here’s a little video of our plane where you can hear the classical music playing.

We arrived in Vienna and merrily rented our car, feeling so smug about arriving at our hotel and then maybe doing a little sightseeing. After all we landed at 12:30pm – enough time to see a few things before nightfall, right? A few hours later my thoughts had changed and I was ready to call it a good day when we actually reached our hotel.

This is not just a picture of a car but OUR car and it represents we made it safely after driving around in circles for over an hour looking for how to get to our hotel – risking the life and limbs of pedestrians as they crossed streets. We were honked at so many times and we found ourselves going down one way streets, trying to figure out road signs, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if people were wondering what was going on after they saw this little flash of red come circling the block for the 10th or was it the 20th time….? Hmmm

 

 

We couldn’t even read some of the street signs properly for they were different than our US ones… for the most part. Have you ever seen this one before? Although I thought this sign was only in Austria, apparently it was spotted in Sedona the other day as well.

 

It seemed the oddest place to have this kind of sign – right in the middle of bustling old town Vienna.

I was glad I had brought along a sightseeing book so I could reference it for what the street signs meant!