Euro Blog Day 2: Sydney Yogi
May 23, 2009 Disclaimer: I spent all last night writing a wonderfully detailed, witty and entertaining blog and the computer locked up and I lost everything. Just a heads up, this is not going to be detailed, witty or entertaining because I am rather annoyed. Here's what we did on May 21: landed in Vienna, Austria, went to the hotel, went to dinner, ate some schnitzel, walked around, saw some palaces and went to bed. Haha! I'm totally kidding. Although it will be hard, I am going to do my best to remember all of the things I said because I want to tell all of our faithful followers what's going on. So here we go. ½Stay awake or your team will get a seven-minute penalty," our coaches said. The first time I heard those words they didn't work out so well for me. As you may or may not have already heard, I was the only one to fall asleep on the plane ride from Austin to Dallas (let me remind you that the flight is barely even an hour long). so my Amazing Race team got a seven-minute delay penalty. Sorry to Bailey (Webster) and J (Juliann Faucette). I was going to do everything in my power to keep my eyes wide open on the remainder of the 'stay awake' legs of our trip, which included a 6 hour layover in London. Playing my Gameboy helped a lot and watching some of our teammates chase the coach's kids, Parker Elliott and Ella Hosfeld, kept us all entertained. People watching in what could've been one of the most crowded airports I have ever seen was a good way to pass the remaining time. Needless to say when we finally got to Vienna, Austria after many, many hours of traveling, everyone was exhausted. However, that all seemed to disappear as soon as we started driving into the city. Vienna was a beautiful city filled with tiny cafes, wonderful food, grand architecture and historic monuments. The moment we entered the main square, the excitement in the car exploded and loud chatter and the snapping of pictures filled the air. We made it to the hotel, designed with original European architecture and were delighted to see that it was quite quaint. A lot of us were especially excited that we could open our windows and call to each other from our balconies. Apparently it was because it was ½like a scene straight out of a European movie½ (I'll save the dignity of the person who I just quoted).
After cleaning up a bit, we headed to dinner using the underground metro, also known as-the place we spent most of our time in Vienna, but more about that in Kiley's entry. We ate dinner at an amazing restaurant. We had schnitzel, potatoes, salad and a delicious custard strudel for dessert. As an extra treat, we even had an accordion player perform for us while we ate. We were stuffed, so we decided to walk back to our hotel through the city. Ok, ok so we didn't actually decide this (if you knew our team, you would probably smell something fishy in that previous sentence), but our amazing tour guide, Cory, led us through some of Vienna's most historic buildings, including the Palace of Hapsburg from WW1. Little did we know he was showing us these places and how to use the metro because we would need them for our Amazing Race the following day. Some of us, I won't name any names, probably should've been paying more attention, but we all know it made for a very interesting first adventure in Europe. All in all, we had a great first night in Vienna. staying awake, driving through the city, stuffing our bellies with food and seeing some historic monuments wasn't too shabby of a way to start off our trip. Our first day and for many of us our first experience, in Europe was incredible and we couldn't wait to see what else was in store. Oh and did I mention I finally got to go to sleep without a penalty. So that was the best I could do, hope y´all (oh my, I can't believe a Hawaiian just said that) enjoyed it! I'm off to the spa until dinner. What a tough life. Until next time, Syd |
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