Day 8 - Vienna

Today we had a day trip to Vienna.  We left at 9 and arrived in the city a bit after 10.  We walked up to the StephenPlatz and checked out St.Stephen's Cathedral -- amazing.  Then we had some free time for lunch, and then (most of us) went to the Schonbrunn Palace tour.  It was truly stunning.  Unfortunately we only had time to tour the palace, but we didn't get to really look at the gardens and grounds which are ridiculously extensive.  The glimpses that I saw were just amazing.

After that we went back to the city center and walked around the Hofburg palace and stopped in several churches -- the Augustinian Church, St. Peter's (we sang Non Nobis there) and then St. Michael's.  After that we were back on the bus and headed out toward Bratislava again.  We took the back roads and stopped in Hainburg for a leisurely and yummy dinner followed by a quick look around the town (it has some pretty awesome medieval fortifications).  Eventually we were all herded back on the bus (really, it's like herding cats!) and headed back to the hotel in Bratislava.  We arrived back about 9.

I have to say a quick word about our guide, Juraj.  He is amazing.  He is from Bratislava.  We met him in Budapest and he will be with us until we leave from Prague.  He speaks 5 languages (English, German, Slovak, Czech, and Russian) and has a Ph.D in architecture.  He's incredibly knowledgeable about the history of the region, and of course he gives us a lot of information about the architecture of the various things we see.  In addition he has a wonderful sense of humor, he's very very patient (important with this group) and he's VERY TALL (which makes him easy to spot in a crowd :-) ).  We are very lucky to have such an excellent guide!