Vienna; Friday, 24 January, 2020

I had wanted a bit of lie-in, but that wasn’t to be as Housekeeping decided to barge into the room at 08:20 and then a short time after that an incessant drilling from somewhere inside the building ensured that there was no chance to go back to sleep, so instead I got up and went to have a shower, where I discovered that my 4 star hotel certainly didn’t have a 4 star shower. Low pressure and a constant flip between tepid and scalding led to an unpleasant and painful shower. After that disappointment I headed down to breakfast where I had to wait a couple of minutes before a table became available – clearly everyone else had been woken up early by either housekeeping or the drilling.

After breakfast I headed out of the hotel and caught the U-Bahn across town to Schwedenplatz in the North East corner of the old town. From here both boat tours down the Danube canal and tram tours round the Ringstraße depart. I first headed over to the booking office for the canal tour to get booked onto the next cruise, and with about an hour to spare I then headed back to the tram stop for the Ring Tram tour round the edge of the old city.

The tour turned out to be a bit of a waste of money, as the commentary was patchy at best, and I would probably have seen pretty much the same just by combining a couple of local tram routes to do a circuit round the city. From the tram stop I wandered back over to the Danube Canal tour boarding point and waited for my sailing.

The 75-minute tour up the canal was quite interesting, if a little chilly in the 1C temperatures. The power of the River Danube being shown in the fact the journey up the canal took nearly 60 minutes to make pushing against the flow. The journey back to the pier was a little over 15 minutes!

After a quick stop for lunch I wandered back through the streets of the old town to the Cathedral where I popped in to have a look around, and to take the lift from the church floor to the top of the one of the cathedrals towers for a close up view of the stunning pattern tiled roof. From here there were also views across the city, though the misty murk meant visibility wasn’t that good.

Back down at ground level I continued to wander through the old town before heading over to the Schloß Belvedere where I had a nice walk through the palaces grounds. The end of the grounds was close to the hotel, so I headed back there to freshen up before heading out for dinner.

After dinner I headed back to the hotel and I had intended on having a relaxing drink in the bar before turning in. When I got to the bar a little after 22:30 it was to see that every single table had been reserved for a private function from 23:45. A little annoying, but as I only wanted a single drink not a major issue. However, as I ordered my drink a barman came round and altered the time to 23:15 and then over the following 25 minutes kept reminding the couple of us using the bar that we had to leave before then. Not the most welcoming experience. I pushed it until 23:10 at which point I headed back up to my room and turned in.

Unfortunately, the person staying in the neighbouring room had turned in before me, and it was at this point that I discovered quite how thin the walls were as their snoring penetrated through at full volume leading to a very disrupted nights sleep.