Graz and Vienna

After being dropped off at the train station in Sezana, Slovenia, we took a train all day to arrive in Graz, Austria.  There were two reasons for stopping here.  One: it was too long to go all the way to Vienna in one go from Sezana.  Two: Graz's historic center is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Since the hostel in Graz didn't have a kitchen, and the restaurant that was suggested to us had a menu only in German, we picked up sandwich stuff for dinner from the grocery store.  But better than paying three times the price for mystery meals at the restaurant.

In the morning we headed straight to downtown historic Graz.  One of the sights to see, according to Wikitravel, was the glockenspiel, which went off at 11am and 5pm.  We waited around for 10 minutes to see the clock go off at 11 and it was very disappointing.  Wikitravel made it seem more interesting.

See that figure of a man and women?  They just spin around while the bells are chiming. I don't really know what more I expected though.

In the middle of town is a hill where part of a fort still stands.  It had cool views of the city, and an enormous clock tower. And that is all there is to see in Graz.  We headed back to the hostel to catch the 3:30 train to Vienna.  The train ride was incredibly scenic and part of it is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Thankfully our hostel in Vienna had a kitchen (we were really sick of cold sandwiches) so we made pasta with gorgonzola tomato sauce and red pepper. If you see Barilla's gorgonzola tomato sauce in the grocery store, seriously try it. Amazing.

In the morning we walked around downtown Vienna.  There is a giant old church that dominates the downtown square and is free to enter (yay for free stuff).  We walked around Hofburg palace and it's surrounding gardens, which wasn't very impressive, presumably because it's in a city.

The most impressive part of Hofburg palace

For lunch we headed back to the hostel to make stir fry vegetable sandwiches with tuna fish.  In the afternoon we walked to a cute church just around the corner from our hostel and people watched in the park in front of it.

Dinner was again pasta and vegetables but for dessert we decided to splurge and bought a box of three mini frozen chocolate cakes that are heated in the microwave and drizzled with chocolate sauce. Excellent.