Vienna Day 5!

Free day today! A ton of people were doing day trips either to Salzburg or Budapest, and I was originally going to do Budapest, but your girl is tired. Train tickets were 70 euros, it's a 3 hour train ride, and I would have had to wake up early. So instead I decided to stay in Vienna and hang out with the other Vienna goers. I had a nice lazy start to the day, woke up right before 10, ate breakfast, and then got ready. Then Theresa, Grace, Tate, and I headed to the mall to do some shopping. I got a super cute dress that I’m really excited about and Theresa got some really cute shirts. 

From the mall, we headed to Cafe Central, which is a really famous cafe that the Vienna Circle frequented (a group of super important mathematicians, philosophers, physicists). It’s a super popular place, so we had to wait outside for a while, and it was dumping rain on us. Thank goodness for my shawl and Theresa’s umbrella! We didn't have to wait a super long time luckily, and good conversation always makes the time go faster, so before we knew it we were inside. Theresa is a philosophy major with a physics minor so she was so excited and it was super fun to be able to experience it with her. It was lunch time, so I got this celery cream soup and some chocolate cake Viennese style. When they brought out the soup it had this orange fluff on it and I was very confused. And then when I tasted it, it tasted like salty orange so I was very apprehensive. But I mixed it all together and it ended up being a lot better than I expected! My favorite part was definitely the chocolate cake though. It was warm and covered with melted chocolate, and it came with ice cream and whipped cream on the side. It was just vanilla ice cream but it had almost a caramelly buttery taste to it and it was sooo good. I kept finding more surprises in the dessert haha. Underneath the whipped cream was almonds, and then when I lifted up the ice cream bowl, it had been stuck to the plate with marzipan! Very yum, and then the cutest tiniest little strawberry on the side.

Theresa and I had been planning on staying at the cafe for a while, reading and doing work, but then we felt bad because it was so busy, so Theresa, Sienna, and I headed out in search of another cafe. The thing about European cafes is that they are everywhere, but most of them don’t have the vibe of being a place where you can pull out your laptop haha. So we kept mapping to different cafes, I think we went to at least 4 different ones, and for some reason or another none of them worked. So we just started kind of walking, and we were saved by Damn Good Balls, a dumpling place! It had a super chill vibe and it wasn’t super busy. I got some gyro dumplings and delicious Parmesan garlic edamame, and of course no work was done because chatting is just too much fun. 

The thing about Vienna’s public transport is that a lot of the time, the time it takes to walk is the same as it takes to take the tram haha. So we decided to just do the 30 minute walk home and it was so lovely. Vienna is just a beautiful city and it seems very family oriented because there are always families and their kids out. We stumbled on a vintage thrift store on the way back so of course we stopped in. And then it ended up being the last day of their sale, so everything was 50% off! They had so many cute jean skirts but none of them fit and I was devastated, but Theresa got a stunning vintage Italian skirt and sienna got this short red Calvin Klein trench coat and a blouse. Literally everything was vintage designer (they had multiple Valentino pieces), and because it was on sale it was all so cheap! I am insanely jealous of them for finding things and now I need to find vintage stores in Sweden and Berlin.

We started walking back to the hotel again and we wanted to stop at a Billa or different grocery store, but literally everything was closed at 6pm. We think it must be a weekend thing because Europe actually cares about their employee’s quality of life hahaha. So we ended up just walking straight back to the hotel and had a wonderful walk. The weather really cleared up in the evening so it was so nice!

When we got back I literally blogged my life away (for you guys :3), ate chocolate, strawberry gummies, and a nectarine for dinner, and had a chill night in the hotel lobby!