Vienna

It only took an hour to get from Bratislava to Vienna, although we still managed to cock it up slightly - by getting Westbahnhof and Hauptbahnhof confused - but no matter, the metro is efficient and easy to understand. We dropped our bags off at our host's and went straight to Vienna zoo - I was determined to cram lots of stuff into our three-ish days there. The weather continued gloriously and we spent the afternoon walking around the zoo and got to see some very cool, lazy, fat pandas.

We crashed that eve as were both a bit knackered. On Sunday we went on a self-guided tour around the old district, using the directions in one of the guides our host leant us. We had a gander at all the fancy buildings, all v.posh. Everything seems very clean and efficient, you definitely felt the change in the way things were run from Slovakia. Naturally prices jumped, too...  We spent the evening lazing in one of the city parks.

On Monday we went to the Natural History museum as it's meant to be one of the best in Europe. Yes, it was nice but I still managed to get annoyed: We weren't allowed to put our rucksack and umbrella in the left luggage bit as we didn't have any money on us (we paid by card for the entry). What's that all about? You pay to get in, it seems arsey to make you pay to leave your bag, especially when signs say you're not allowed bags/umbrellas. Fair enough if the lockers are coin operated, but they wouldn't even let me leave my umbrella - like it's really making a difference? Sort of like over-efficient ridged rule following to the point of being a pain in the arse. But anyway, the museum was pretty funky, big mineral and meteorite exhibition and all the dinosaur stuff. There was also a Neanderthal section that had the same film playing that we watched in the Neanderthal museum in Croatia - did they nick it?

I liked Vienna, it was pretty and posh - but I also felt like it was out of my reach price-wise... A definite jump from Slovakia and Hungary.