LOOPING THE CANAL du NIVERNAIS 2014: Taking advice from a local

Tuesday August 5th

The clock was a a priority today - we were there and waiting for it to start. I was impressed!

The advice we got from a local yesterday was:

1. Strauss monument in the Stadpark
2. Go to a Heurigen
3. Take the bus up the mountain for a fabulous view

So, this became our plan for the day. First stop was Kahlenberg Mountain. We jumped on the tram until we saw the sign to Grisnzing and then transferred to a bus. We got off when we saw Grisnzing, a cute little town - walked around for a bit, took some pics and then back to the bus stop.

Eventually the bus we needed came along and we made it to the top of the mountain.

From here we made our way down the mountain, switched back to the tram and headed for Nussdorf. Humm...Nussdorf we know Nussdorf , a few days ago we got Auf Wiedersehehened off the tram there!

We once again got to the end of the line and got off. We looked around for a Heurigen but saw nothing. So, we walked down the big hill keeping our eyes peeled. We strolled into one place but the main attraction was beer.

A Heurigen is a winery that sells their wine at very reasonable rates and serves really good local food. The beer place looked really nice but we kept on walking. Eventually we were at the bottom of the hill and no wine in sight. I asked a women about the location of them and she pointed back up this big hill. So, we jumped back on the tram and back up we went. This time we got off and walked up ~ sure enough there were two, one was closed and the sign indicated to us that the open one served beer . But the grapes inside the beer stein were in fact just a mixed message!

Holy Schnitzel!

This is what a wine garden looks like!

Beer mug with grapes?

The wine was excellent and so was the food. They had a buffet of sorts. You pointed out what you wanted they weighed it and you paid by the weight. Neither of us really liked this option considering we did not recognize half of the things in the buffet. The server spoke excellent English and she suggested the schnitzel - seriously the schnitzel! It was a cool little place and I think besides us there was only one other table of tourists, all the rest were locals.

While waiting for the tram we did some window shopping, Garth was not interested in any of them?

We left Nussdorf and headed back to Vienna for our last recommended stop , Stadpark's monument to Strauss. There are several monuments/statues to all of the composers as well as several homes and areas claiming to be where they were from. In reality they moved around this city as it was explained to us that none of them had very much money so they were continually being asked to move on. Mozart being the exception.