Day 10 – Vienna

Today I woke up to another spectacular view of Bled and it seemed to be even more amazing to look at this time. Probably because we would be leaving it for Vienna today. I said it before and I’ll say it one thousand times more: I would absolutely love to come back to Bled some day soon. That would be phenomenal. We left Bled at 9:30 and finally pulled into Vienna at 4:30. We had a driving and walking tour at 5:30 that started on the “new” side of Vienna and around the outside of “old” Vienna and ended up with us being dropped off in the middle of “old” Vienna for the walking portion of the tour. The new side of Vienna has all modernized buildings due to most of the older ones being destroyed in World War II. The old side of Vienna has stayed in tact for the most part. As beautiful as Bled was with all of the views and an old time feel to it, Vienna was nearly the same. So many of the buildings had that old rustic look to them and you can just tell they have been around for centuries. One of our first stops was at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, or “Stephansdom”. This was an ENORMOUS church. Probably the biggest we have been in so far. Beautiful both outside and in, but we couldn’t stay inside too long because there was a mass going on. After that, we walked the streets for around half an hour with our tour guide Kathy showing us the best places in town for coffee, shopping, etc. We made our way to see some of the oldest buildings like the opera house, the anchor clock, the Belvedere Palace, and The Schoenbrunn Palace where the emperor had lived and where Marie Antoinette was born. By far the best part of the tour was walking out of the Ring Boulevard (basically the downtown) and seeing all of these buildings in the distance lit up at night all across the city. It was a very cool sight to see. We hopped back on our bus to get dinner (soup, wiener schnitzel and fries, and chocolate cake) and then came to the hotel where we will stay in for the night so we aren’t tired for our biggest game of the trip against the EUHL tomorrow in Slovakia. This team played our D2 Selects team last year and defeated them 4-3 so it will most definitely be a great test for us. The final two games WILL be broadcasted on the internet. I will only be playing in the first period for tomorrow night’s game, which will be at 5:45 our time which I believe is 10:45 at home, and then I will be done playing for the rest of the trip. The link to watch the game will be posted on the blog our Commissioner has been keeping which is: http://achahockey.org/view/achahockey/men-s-d3/d3-selects-tour-blog. I am not sure when he will be posting it, but it will be done soon I believe. For some reason, none of my pictures are uploading. I will try again tomorrow and hopefully it works then.