Since there was nothing much else open on Sunday we spent our last full day seeing touristy things.

First stop, Schonbrunn Palace.

Originally a hunting lodge, these people clearly had no idea when to stop renovating. Believe it or not this is the back door. Actually… I’m not sure. The front and the back look the same.

I’ve come to realise, in the last week, how little I know about European history. I know a tiny amount about the last century (there were two big wars, apparently?), a fact or two about English history and pretty much nothing forward from Attila the Hun when it comes to Central Europe. For example, I had simple no idea that a family called the Hapsburgs ruled most of Europe for many centuries. They were the heads of the Roman Empire as well as Archdukes and Duchesses of Austria. As far as I can ascertain Marie Antoinette was also one of them.

But you’re not here for a history lesson – which is just as well, because I’ve forgotten most of what I heard. All I really remember is that they were stinking rich and one of them had seriously long hair. Unfortunately no photos are allowed inside the extremely well-preserved palace but there’s some on the website.

The day before we went was cloudy and cold and Luke had left his sunglasses in Krumlov so neither of us went prepared for the retina-burning glare that is Schonbrunn Palace in sunny weather. We sort of half-saw the garden through our mostly-closed eyes. What we saw was pretty nice though.

The Gloriette – no idea what the purpose of this building used to be, probably a room where they just sat and looked at the view,  but now it’s a cafe and we went up some stairs to the roof to admire the view of the Hapsburg’s backyard.

The view from the top of the Gloriette over the gardens to the palace.

After the palace we went into the city and looked through the Treasury. There were many shiny things and some very heavy and scratchy looking tabards and cloaks and whatnot. Quite a good collection. There was also a piece of the one true cross… or so they said.

After the Treasury our feet were killing us, so we spent most of the rest of the day eating and drinking at the Kafka Cafe and looking forward immensely to not having to sleep in a hostel in Budapest. I’m almost excited about the prospect of only hearing one person snoring. Hostels, it must be said, are starting to lose their charm. I’m not sure why, but there’s something about them that causes young men to want to whistle, shout and knock loudly late at night. God knows why.

We had originally planned to spend three nights in Cesky Krumov but extended another night on the basis that the town was pretty, we unexpectedly had a room to ourselves and the people we’d met there were really nice.

And thank goodness we did. We ended up having a really great last evening. We sat outside in the sun talking to Brennan, the manager (from the US), his friend Sacha (from Brazil) and his girlfriend, another friend of theirs from the Czech Republic and two travelers who were also staying at the hostel – Judy from Sydney and another guy from Taiwan.

I love hearing people’s stories and Sacha particularly was full of them. In a quite typically flamboyant Brazilian manner he told us about how he’d ended up in Krumlov and what he loved about the place. Brennan told us some hilarious stories about crazy, and in one case axe-wielding, guests at the hostel and also impressed us with his Christopher Walken impressions.

After several hours in the sun we had dinner then moved to a bar belonging to a friend of their from Honduras. He decided to make it a lock in and nailed a ‘closed’ sign to the door and then poured some absinthe shots and we sat around til nearly 2am. Everyone else disappeared then Brennan, Luke and I walked back to the hostel.

The next morning I did not feel fabulous (to put it mildly) but fortunately our shuttle wasn’t picking us up until lunch time. We had booked a shuttle rather than using public transport as the cost was fairly similar and the service is door to door. We shared the car with an American couple and chatted most of the way. Our driver told us about the countryside we went through and was much better than the taciturn fellow we’d had from Munich.

Vienna was cold and grey on our arrival and didn’t have the same impact on me as Munich had. I’ve been wondering about why, because really, they are quite similar cities. I think the weather had a bit to do with it, plus we’ve spent part of our time here dealing with Ryanair and tearing our hair out. I went to print out our Bratislava-London boarding passes and the booking is somehow in the name of ‘Ms (my name) and Mr (my name). Now, I’m happy to believe I could have foolishly entered my own name twice, but to put myself down as ‘Mr’? Ryanair charges 110 euros to change the name on a booking. Which is more than the flights are worth by a significant margin. The woman we eventually managed to get hold of on the phone (and that was a mission in itself) flat out refused to help me or put me through to a superior. We ended up buying a new flight for Luke at nearly 100 euros… the whole thing has left me swearing never to use Ryanair again.