Wien Day 3 and arrival in Prague

Last night after I gave you all an update (whilst it was pouring rain in Vienna), we headed off on another adventure. We didn't want to head back to our shady, dirty hostel (BLUE CORRIDOR - avoid it), so we went to Prater, which is the amusement park a little ways outside of Vienna. There is a famous "giant ferris wheel" there a la the London Eye, though this one is wooden and perhaps not quite so cool. We were glad to do it, though, it provided some nice views and it was a little different than the other things we had done in Vienna.

This morning we started early, and headed off to the Beethoven rooms. We were told they opened at 9 but were unhappy to find on our arrival at 8:45 that they didn't open until 10. Conceding defeat, we headed to the Mozarthaus and had a cup of tea while we waited for it to open at 10. We wanted to see more and hear less about the mundane history of Mozart - we saw Amadeus, sheesh! Then we walked over the Belvedere, which is an old palace that has been converted into a museum. Despite the guidebooks saying that it is not to be missed, I was relatively unimpressed! When we got bored of art (read: very soon after arrival), we walked to the train station and managed to catch the early train to Prague. We had another uneventful journey. I finished reading Atonement, and took a long nap.

Our hostel in Prague (Clown and Bard) is very nice, clean and friendly. We are sharing our room with three Scotsmen (excellent accents). Tonight we met up with a friend of mine called Leona, who I hadn't seen in five years. We had a class together when I was a sophomore in college while she was studying abroad at GW. We had sporadically kept in touch over the years, but it was so great to see her again! We had some Czech food and some wine, and we are going to see her again tomorrow! She is going to look into Opera tickets or something else fun we can get up to for our last night on my tour of Europe (for now, of course). She is actually moving to Denmark in a few months so I will now have someone to meet up with when I go there (now on the list of places to go!).

As we are off to another early start tomorrow, I am off to bed. Need lots of time to explore Prague manana!