Thailand to Tyrol

Checked out on Tuesday for our long day of travel – final destination Vienna.  Our hotel-supplied car to the airport was great; X babbled the whole way with a classic line, indicting Linton: “I don’t ever stop talking, do I? You told me that, didn’t you, Dad”!!  Certainly, Linton was right but it was funny to hear him understand and verbalise it!  Enjoyed the indoor-outdoor terminal feel at the airport before boarding via the quaint little bus-train thing they have going on and taking off on-time at midday.

Koh Samui airport

Smooth flight, again with brilliant meal service for the short trip, and landed after a very long descent at Bangkok, where X proceeded to have the biggest meltdown ever, about not being able to have his teddy to suck on while we traversed the airport in the transfer bus to the terminal.  After everyone on the bus thinking he was a spoiled brat, we finally got to disembark, collect our bags, find a taxi and head off for the cheap hotel we had book to tide us over for the long transfer time our our respective flights to Vienna.  We checked in about 2.30pm, after waiting for what seemed like an age for our bags to be spat out onto the carousel, and decided to go for a swim to kill some time.  X enjoyed getting back in the water, while Linton and I (OK, mainly me...!) were taken with the view of aircraft of all shapes and sizes coming in to land at the airport.  We pretty much had the planes at eye-level as we swam (although Linton stayed dry to give his ear infection, the subject of about $50 worth of antibiotic (prescription only by label, but payment only required in practice!!) tablets and eardrops, a chance to heal).  Linton departed for the airport for his flight, via Doha, around 6pm, taking off at 8.25pm.  X and I had some extra time to kill, so we headed to the Sky Bar for dinner and a beer (me, not him!).  Xavier’s insistence that he have ‘chippies’ was indulged, but the free prawn crackers on the table took care of most of his hunger, meaning a few chips were consumed and I ate most of the Hawaiian pizza unaided.

Complimentary prawn crackers at Skybar probably obviated the need for pizza and chips!

Hawaiian pizza at Skybar - surprisingly good

Our almost midnight departure ought to have been a nightmare, but Xavier has shown himself a pretty adept little traveller.  We arrived at the airport, checked in around 9.15pm and magically transitioned through immigration control and security in around 5 minutes with the (angelic!) power of our priority passenger cards, which in my opinion are probably worth 50% of the premium paid for a business class ticket!  We found the airport incredibly busy so quickly searched out and located the Singapore Airlines lounge, which was one of the two options available to us as passengers on Austrian Airlines.  Linton had reported the Thai Airways Silk lounge to be fairly average, so we tried the SQ equivalent to see what it was like.  Alas, it was also relatively underwhelming but provided a quiet place to pass the 90 minutes until boarding commenced.  Haagen Dazs chocolate ice-cream (I know, giving a 3 year old ice cream at 10pm would ordinarily be a mortal sin!) hit the spot for X and we whiled away the minutes, him watching YouTube videos on the awful WiFi connection.

As we had seen our aircraft arrive at 2.30pm from our hotel room window, and Austrian didn’t do any local flights to keep the plane busy in between, we boarded on-time around 11.30pm.

Patiently waiting with the help of teddy

Finally onboard 

We got comfy in our seats on the 20 year old (I’m not kidding) plane and eventually took off, with the aircraft accelerating unbelievably from the moment the engines were throttled up.  Weirdly, the seatbelt sign did not come off for the whole flight but it was perhaps one of the smoothest long haul flights I’ve experienced.  The seat and entertainment options were pretty good (I got around 5 hours’ sleep altogether and X slumbered for about 7 hours); the service, on the other hand, was awful.  From virtually insisting that I had ordered fish and not lamb for my main course, to repeatedly addressing me in German despite establishing pretty early on that I spoke English, to not initially bringing any breakfast for Xavier, I was genuinely surprised at the low quality of the service.  The food was excellent, if a little too much for my liking at 1am.  The serving of dinner entrees and desserts off carts was, I thought, unnecessary and taking orders in advance for my main meal really proves worthwhile if you get the order right.  All in all, I thought the meal service was overcomplicated and certainly did nothing for my perception of the experience of flying business class with Austrian.

Arrival into Vienna was simple and quick, although at just after 5.30am, you would probably expect the same.  Without an arrivals card to fill in, we spent about a minute in line at immigration control and then waited a few minutes for our bags.  Then off to the airport train station to find our chariot into the city.  While there were plenty of trains, we’d booked a hotel basically across the road from the hauptbahnhof, so this meant we discarded those train services that ran elsewhere.  As a result, we found ourselves with just over 30 minutes to wait.  After the long walk through a couple of heavily heated pedestrian passageways from the arrivals hall, we found no toilets in the station (but a definite need to go!), so had to return half-way to the terminal to locate a loo.  Waited uneventfully otherwise and got on the correct train (which was, of course, on time) to Vienna.  It was pretty much deserted and we disembarked about 20 minutes later.  The brisk air was energising and the blue sky seemed a good omen for the weeks ahead!

We trekked across the road and up the street a bit to our hotel (Azimut).   It was mayhem; the breakfast area adjoined reception so there were lots of people moving from the lifts to breakfast and back, as well as a few others lingering around the reception.  Was advised that checking in this early would be possible only upon payment of 10 euros (which seemed a bargain).  Up to the room for a while then Linton’s text arrived saying he had landed.  We organised to rendezvous in the station when his train arrived so X and I went to a bakery/cafe in the station to have a coffee and something simple to eat (breakfast on the plane was simple and quite decent but it had been almost four hours since we had tucked in).

X greeted Linton with a big hug and we made our way back to the room for a little rest before sorting out a different room with reception.  We had booked and prepaid for a triple via hotels.com but they had communicated to the hotel a request for a superior double or something.  As a result, we were initially assigned quite a small room without space for a rollaway bed.  The mix-up ended up costing us 10 euros extra per night and now leaves us (if we bother; first email request as yet unanswered...) having to ask hotels.com to reimburse us.

Then we set off for the Naschmarkt (market), about 2km away.  X was loaded into the child carrying backpack and within about 10 minutes of leaving, he was asleep.  Alas, I decided he looked uncomfortable and thought I’d carry him but this just woke and irritated him so we had a most displeased child, crying out loud through some apparently quite distinguished streets in Vienna, the noise reverberating off the quite tunnel-like acoustics that the rows of five storey buildings seemed to create!

X before being unwisely awoken on our way to Naschmarkt!

Got to the Naschmarkt and perused our way past loads of Turkish sweets, lolly stalls, fruit and vegetable vendors and tiny beer and wine bars, and eventually reached our first sausage stand!  Two XXL bratwursts with mustard and tomato sauce please.  While the mustard did not appeal to any of us, we had all enjoyed our first authentic German(ic) sausage!  Yummo.  I indulged in a sweet, paste-filled, pastry-like dessert called a ‘zelten’ which was nothing to write home about (although there were multiple vendors scattered throughout the market).  We then headed back via the scenic route to the hotel for a well overdue rest.

Our first choice for dinner on this Wednesday night was full when we walked in at 6.30pm so Trip Advisor’s next best local option was the destination – Cafe Columbus.  Average service, giant Wiener Schnitzel for Linton, chicken cordon bleu for me and a bit of both for X.  We all slept well after that.

Thursday’s plans included the old town centre and the Prater, amusement park-cum-fairground type of place with an old school ferris wheel and a bunch of other (many very tacky) attractions, many of which seemed to be closed.  The Lonely Planet recommended self-guided walking tour wasn’t bad; we popped our head into the main cathedral (Stephansdom) after dodging the (slow and predictably moving, thankfully) white delivery vans that were ubiquitous throughout the highly pedestrianised parts of the old town during our walk to Stephansplatz (we got off the underground one stop too early after lining up for what seemed like a lifetime for our ticket – oops!).  Our walk then took us past a bunch of other sights, including a house Mozart briefly occupied and the main Jesuit church in town.  We stopped a locally operated cafe for a caffeine injection (the hotel’s offerings at breakfast were very weak) (“Zwei melange, bitte”) before continuing our loop past some other churches (it was day two and they all rolled into each other already!), along the Fleishmarkt, through the old Jewish quarter back to the busy main shopping mall, after watching numerous horses and carts trip-trapping along the streets, much to X’s fascination: “I like the horsies best” he exhorted repeatedly!  Lunch was at little open sandwich shop recommended by Rick Stein on his Vienna long weekend show (thanks Austrian Airlines) called Tresniewski, including a pfiff (about 180ml) of beer for each of us.

Open-faced sandwiches for lunch.  Dainty and yummy!

Post-lunch ice-cream - Hello Kitty flavour (what is that?!)

Onto the underground again to the Prater, where we boarded the ferris wheel (10 euros each for L and I; 4 euros for X) for our slow journey into the sky.  Fantastic views over the city and beyond.  X seemed a little uncertain about being up so high and didn’t want to stand up (sat on my lap the whole time).  Wandered through the Prater a bit but didn’t find anything too interesting; it looked strangely deserted and in parts as bit worse for wear.  We headed for the adjoining large park (apparently 60km2) to find a little playground for X to burn off some energy.  Spent a while at one, before moving to another little play area with a big Spiderman type of net for X to climb all over.  Then back to the underground station for our trek back to the hauptbahnhof then home.  All told, just under 14,000 steps!  Definitely burned off the tiny lunchtime beers!

Sky high chair-o-plane as seen from ferris wheel

View of park from ferris wheel

Happily, our preferred dinner destination near the station was available tonight. Pork crackling dumplings for entree, Wiener Schnitzel main for me and beef goulash for Linton, along with beers for the big boys, went down a treat – perhaps the best meal so far (as at 21 Sep) this trip.  X enjoyed one of the large dumpings, lots of bread and bits of Dad and Dada’s meals too.  Back home to bed again thereafter.