Vienna is a big city, with a river running through it, a famous river, the Danube (hence the Blue Danube waltz by Strauss). Christa decided to take us outside the city to see it from above, from the last slopes of the Alps which sort of end at Vienna….
What you should notice about these pictures is 1) basically the river separates the older city, from some of the newer parts of the city; 2) that the river actually splits in Vienna, and there is a long canal for a good long way; 3) notice where the high rise buildings are; 4) looking back down the river you can see a famous monastery/convent in the distance…
In order to get to this viewing point, we drove through the wine district and several little suburbs….
There is a church commemorating how the King of Poland came to the rescue of Vienna when it was about to be overrun by a Muslim army. 
You can see the church from the village below….
There are several cute little villages below, in one of which Schubert composed one of his famous songs. 
It was time for us to go ‘down by the riverside’ for some good fish caught in the Danube…
Of course when we walked in, we saw this sign….
Which means literally ‘grace of God’ and is a greeting, which is used in southern Germany and Austria to mean greetings. So we are expecting to meet the Grubers. Instead, some Turks had bought the restaurant, taken over, and were offering both Turkish and Austrian cuisine.
The view was excellent as was the company, but the food was pretty ordinary, even by fish camp standards. But that’s o.k. We had a great day anyway. Time to go back to the hotel, take a walk in the park across the street and have a cup of coffee in Klimmt cups! There is a special coffee offered in Vienna… called a Melange (they must have copied it from the French). Anyway, its delicious, better than a cappuccino.
On the way to the coffee, we noticed how very ornate the back of the main university building is! I’ve never seen this at an American university for sure.
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