Vienna

Wednesday 12th March

We had an early flight departing Heathrow at 7:05am and were in the city centre by 11:30am. Made our way to the apartment which was surprisingly cheap even for March. Expecting to leave our bags in the office until 3pm, we were told our room was ready. So quickly unpacked and headed out on foot walking east towards the river Danube.

The weather was warm and sunny for March, so no coats required. The city was remarkably clean – shame our towns and cities in the UK can’t follow the European example. On reaching the Danube we photographed a tower building I had previously seen on LocationScout (an app you can ready about in the Planning section of this site).

A closer look reveals our interest in photographing this building…

It was 3 miles from our apartment to the Danube and along route Vanessa’s sole of her boots started to come away from the leather. So naturally we had to shop for another pair of blue shoes as they wouldn’t have lasted the trip. She had previously tried and failed to find a new similar blue pair in the UK, I did consider this was part of her plan. The apartment was so cheap, she could blow the savings on a new pair of shoes – not so cheap at £101! But she’s worth it (just).

Heading back across the Danube there must have been about a dozen or more river cruise boats all moored up, some taking on passengers, so I guess the cruising season is about to start.

Back on the west bank, there was an interesting church, the St. Francis of Assisi Church.

We thought this would be an interesting subject at night, so we hung around the area in search of a bar. To my absolute amazement we couldn’t find one that was open (this was about 4pm!), so I relegated my passion for a beer to a coffee only to be told, sorry we are now closed! So clearly tourism hasn’t started in the outer city district. Resorting to Google, we did find a café on the river bank, so I left Vanessa there whilst I took the underground back to the apartment to collect my Canon camera and our tripods for the evening.

I’ve never captured light trails before, but the location of the church next to a major road made it difficult for an isolated image. These 2 images were each taken by combining two exposures – one for the street lamps and the other for the church which avoids the lights burning out with a 5 second exposure.

We now took the underground back to our apartment (which was a 2 minute walk from the station) to drop off our camera gear, but this image altered our plan.

We then walked 400m to the left of the Votive Church to the Café Restaurant Maximilian which we can recommend. I had one of the best seafood pasta dishes I’ve ever had and Vanessa’s burger was really tasty. We will be revisiting this before we go home on Sunday.