Vienna, of Palaces

We had booked a taxi through the net for an early morning drop to the station. We kept a margin of one hour, just in case the taxi was not there.

The train was better, and it was already there when we reached the station. The journey was comfortable and we reached Vienna at 9:25am. Took a taxi to our hotel. The taxi driver was disappointed to see the address of our hotel as it was quite near the station. Hotels were expensive in Vienna. Our hotel was nothing great but done nicely. We kept our luggage in a room there and left to see the city. The receptionist helped us with directions to the nearest metro station. 

Our first stop was St. Stephen's cathedral which had free entry, but we did the catacomb's tour also which was €5 per adult & € 2 per child. 

From there we walked to the Hofburg palace.

The Hofburg palace was mainly the crockery and also the Sisi museum was interesting. From there we sat in a very nice Italian restaurant and had a great meal of Pizza, ravioli etc. The bread was particularly tasty and reminded me of home made bread made  by a dear friend.

The we took the U4 to Schonbrunn U stop and went to see the Schonbrunn palace. It was somewhat similiar to the Hofburg palace. 

Back to the same metro stop and then to Belvedere we just managed the Upper Belvedere. It was a long walk.

Along the way

Belvedere

They allowed photography in the hall outside only. But it was nice to see Gustav Klimt's  " The Kiss"

We were so tired we just took the first tram we saw. And headed back to hotel.

The reception at the hotel.

Prague to Krakow - by overnight sleeper train

We reached the station well before time. The hotel had called for a taxi. Just a little distance away, outside the pedestrian area. This leg of our journey had been the most difficult to organize and the most costly as well. We had decided to visit Krakow in Poland, instead of Warsaw, because Krakow is the historical centre and it is near the border. Kraków remained relatively undamaged at the end of World War II, sparing most of the city's historical and architectural legacy.

The train tickets for this journey, could not be bought from Internet, the official rail sites were showing the train schedules but not selling the tickets. After trying several times Shaleen was able to get reservations through the Internet for sleeper berths from the official railway site of the Czech republic, but we could not purchase the tickets. So we had to buy them on reaching the station. While Shaleen was buying them, we were waiting and doing people watching. I discovered that almost every 4th person was accompanied by a dog.

Numerous cyclists going down the escalator with their cycles.

We reaches the platform and the train was standing there. We boarded it comfortably half an hour before time.

We had two sleeper cabins of two berths each. It was an air-conditioned coach. The cabins had wash basins inside them. But toilets were outside the cabins. (In contrast to the train we had taken in Spain, last year which had a bathroom with shower, basin, and WC.) It was equivalent to A/c first in India.

They had shower facility in the train, but the coach attendant said that it was not in use. So our planning of having a shower early before leaving the train was foiled. We had a full day of excursion planned directly from the train.

We were to reach Krakow early in the morning at 6:30 am.

We reached the Krakow on time. We got a cup of coffee and a croissant complimentary, from the coach attendant.

As the train reached the platform and we took out our luggage. I got a call, from the driver who had come to receive us, on my international number. He said he would meet us at the platform. His name was Phillip and sure enough he met us with a placard. We had arranged the car, for pick up from the station and then proceed straight away to Auschwitz & Birkenau and then to the Wieliczka Saltmine, and then back to Krakow. This was through KRK Krakow tours. As I had badly wanted to visit both the places and we calculated that it would be impossible to cover both of them through public transport in one day. The idea of hiring a car for the trip, came from Trip Advisor.  I liked the railway station, Krakow Glowny as we just had to take the elevator up from the railway platform to reach the parking. It was very convenient.

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