Vienna, Part 3 of 6

Had to check out of the hostel at 11. Managed to get up and out in time. CNN had John Stewart's the Daily Show on this morning, which was hilarious. Packed everything up and got on the metro to our next hostel. We had to catch a bus to take us to it. 

When we first saw the site of our second hostel, I was surprised because it looked like a huge house that was very old. Come to find out, it was built in the 1700s and is now a hotel. The hostel was farther down the road to the left and was a lot smaller. Still cute, though. We left all of our stuff and went searching for lunch. 

We found it near the Natural History Museum. The restaurant was a little on the expensive side but we managed to find fairly reasonable entrees. The food was really good. It seems like the waiters are always slow here. I'm only concerned about it when it takes 20 minutes to get the check after obviously trying to get someone's attention.

The Art History museum was first, though, and Laura-Nelle and I took our time going through to see the Caravaggios and Vermeers. Some of the paintings were absolutely huge and coverd an entire 20 ft high wall. The Natural History museum was kind of neat, too. They had lots of dinosaur fossils and Neanderthal tools. They also have the Venus of Willendorf, which was discovered in Austria. An entire section of the museum was dedicated to rocks and minerals. Huge specimens of salt and quartz were incredible to see. We took photos with the wooly mammoth model. 

The Billa was closed on Sundays so we went to a McDonald's for dinner instead. It wasn't as bad as it is in the U.S. The sauces are different and it is generally cleaner and better designed. This one also wasn't all unattractive yellow and red. 

As we headed back to the hostel, Terry and I decided to check out the hotel (read: see if there's a bar). It was large and very empty. There wasn't even anyone at the check-in desk. It reminded me of The Shining. Our keys didn't work at the room door, but we weren't really worried at the time because L-N let us in. L-N and I went searching for some ice cream around 9:30 and noticed that all the lights were off in the main areas of the hostel. We did find an ice cream vending machine downstairs. While we were down there, we went looking for Terry and Rima. We saw a room called "lounge" and headed there. There was creepy pink light coming out of the room and water leaking underneath the door. Only they were in there. I left after a little while and went upstairs to find internet, where the lights were still off. It was a little creepy and weird all around. I couldn't figure out a good reason for turning the lights off.