St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna

The symbol of Vienna, St. Stephen's Cathedral, stands tall in the center of Vienna. The first sight of the south tower was just surprising and magnificent. We were walking down the narrow street, and all of a sudden a tip of beautiful looking tower appeared in front of us. It reminded me of a scene from the UFO movie :) Yes, I was that surprised with the first sight.

The cathedral was first built in the 12th century and has been remodeled to be the current gothic style in the 14-16th century. The south tower is 137m high, and it has a nickname of "Steffl."  You can actually go up the tower, although we didn't as the last admission ended at 4:30pm.  We were late for that.  What I really liked was the roof of the cathedral.  It was just beautiful.  It says that it is covered with 230,000 glazed tiles.

The cathedral also has catacombs which holds the remains from the massive death by Black Plague (killed 150,000 people in Vienna).

Vienna Streets

Just like Tokyo, Vienna consists of 23 zones (Bezirk), but each zone is much much smaller than the one in Tokyo.  The zone-1 is the center of Vienna, and the street called Ring runs around zone-1. Most of the popular sightseeing destinations such as St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephandom), Vienna State Opera, and Hofburg Imperial Palace are located inside zone-1, and everything is so close by that you can walk to any destinations or take a tram which goes around the ring.

We headed to Vienna around noon on April 2nd. By 3:30pm, we arrived at the hotel near Stadpark that is also right next to the station called Parkring. Our plan was to stay there until April 5th, the day I flied out to Japan from Vienna Airport.


We had two full days of sightseeing already planned, but we were eager to check out Vienna as soon as we arrived to the hotel.

We cheked into our hotel, situated gG with a glass of fresh water and a plate of his favorite food, and we decided to take a walk to the Stephansdom, which was about 8 mins away from the hotel.

The most streets inside the zone-1 are narrow and surrounded by the beautiful buildings.  I wonder if it is due to the Easter holidays, there weren't too many cars in zone-1, etiher. Although it was still cold outside, we bundled ourselves up and enjoyed the early evening walk in the city of Vienna.

Open borders

It has been a while since I updated this blog as I had been traveling. We had a great opportunity to visit Vienna, Austria during the Easter holidays. We rented a car and drove down to Vienna. From Brno, it only takes about 2 hrs. Very easy drive I must say.

The great thing is that you don't need to show your passport when you cross the border between Czech Republic and Austria.  Thanks to the Schengen Agreement, which EU countries (except Ireland and UK) have adopted. Basically it is "open borders." You see a gate for the border, but no one is there or no gate is set up. You just drove by as if you were crossing the state borders in the US. But then, the difference is once you cross the border to Austria, language chages. You see German signs rather than Czech signs.  Open borders certainly benefits the travelers, but I also have to imagine it benefits illegal immigrants as well as criminals.