Vienna Trip

I recently took a very short trip to Vienna. After a quick flight to Toronto, I headed to the Maple Leaf Lounge where I OD’d on cheese and crackers.

DEN-YYZ-VIE-YYZ-ORD-DEN

Toronto Maple Leaf Lounge

Toronto Maple Leaf Lounge

Soon enough, it was time to board my Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna.

The amenity kit looked like something out of Harry Potter

The flight attendants began passing out the menus along with a sheet for your breakfast order.

The dinner service started shortly after takeoff.  The food was very good.

The best part of the meal was the coffee service.  They had a menu with about 10 different types of coffee to choose from.  I got coffee with Bailey’s.

Breakfast

The flight went by quickly and we were soon in Vienna.  After landing, I purchased a metro ticket and headed to the Courtyard Marriott Vienna Messe.  There I met my friend who had flown in from Copenhagen.  The hotel was modern and nice, but it was in a business area and far away from any of the tourist sites.

Great view from the hotel room

Vienna is a great city with lots of interesting architecture and culture.

Probably the best bit of culture we saw in Vienna was this:

The 2nd and 3rd nights, we stayed at Le Meridien Vienna which was much more interesting than the Marriott.  Our room was really big with super high ceilings.  There was also a lot of strange art.  The best part is that everything in the minibar is free and they refresh it daily.

For some reason the table had jalapenos in it

Free minibar

Instead of the bible, they have the teaching of Buddha

Fancy shower with lots of jets

Weird Meridien hallway art

We pretty much just spent the rest of the trip walking around Vienna.  I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Schonbrunn Palace

Schonbrunn Palace

Schonbrunn Palace

Schonbrunn Palace

Schonbrunn Palace

Schonbrunn Palace

Schonbrunn Palace

More great art

After a great couple days in Vienna, it was time to head home.  I took the metro to the airport and stopped by the Austrian Airlines Lounge.  It was a nice lounge, but they didn’t have any food other than some pretzel sticks.

Austrian Airlines Lounge Vienna

Lounge drinks

Plane to Toronto

After 30 minutes or so of ODing on pretzel sticks in the lounge, I took the elevator down to the terminal to catch my flight.  As the elevator door was closing, some guy ran up and waived at me to hold the elevator.  I tried pressing the open button, but it didn’t do anything.  Then the guy ran up to the elevator like his life depended on it and jammed his foot in the door.  I think he broke the elevator somehow because for a minute, the elevator just sat there with his foot trapped in the door. Eventually we pried open the doors and he got in.

I walked over to my gate and boarded my flight only to find the elevator guy was sitting right next to me.  The weird thing was throughout the entire flight, I’d look over and he’d be staring at me with a weird grin on his face.  Super creepy.

Besides the creepy guy, this flight was good and very similar to the outbound flight.

Fennel soup

Ricotta stuffed chicken breast

Pre-arrival snack

When we landed in Toronto, I went through immigration and then hung out in the Maple Leaf lounge until my flight to Chicago.  On the flight to Chicago, I sat next to a guy who was a recently retired Boeing engineer.  He said he had helped design the Boeing 737-700 we were flying on.
At one point, I got up to go to the bathroom and I saw none other than the creepy elevator guy sitting right behind me.  I must not have noticed him when I boarded, but there he was — just sitting there with that stupid, stupid grin.  The really scary thing is he was also on my flight to Denver.

Overall, creepy guy aside,  it was a great trip.  I’m going to start doing more super short international trips (Australia in 2 days is likely next).