Mini-vacation in Turkey

This weekend was almost a long weekend - that is, we had Tuesday off so we logically took the Monday off and made it a 4-day weekend. What to do with so much free time?  I know: last minute trip!  My friends Brad and Rachel and I found a great deal for an all-inclusive trip to the western coast of Turkey.  The location was chosen both for its proximity to a great archeological site, and because it was bound to be warmer and sunnier than Vienna!!

We flew off Saturday morning at the crack of dawn. Yawn! The upside of travelling so early is that we arrived at our hotel early afternoon, so we didn't waste a day travelling.  Upon arrival, we threw our stuff into our room and went to look around the place a little. Then we wanted to go into Kusadasi, a nice town just down the coast a little. We walked out to the main road to wait for the minibus that supposedly ran every 30 minutes.  After about 25 minutes wait (because of course we had just missed the previous one), a minibus came our way. Hooray? Not so much: the bus is quite full. The three of us are standing there, and the driver asks us if one or two people want to get on. Ummm, no.  So he drives off. OK, now what?  Conveniently, a taxi drives by and stops to pick us up. 

In Kuşadasi, we wandered around the beach a bit, and then made our way to one of the bazaars.  We looked at touristy crap, nice things too, lovely ceramics, etc.  Some shop owners helpfully and laughingly told us they would like to take our money. Kind of nice to be so direct. We ended up in a carpet store, with the full attention of Mike the salesman.  

We spent about 90 minutes in that shop, looking at a thousand variations on carpets.  Mike was very nice, chatting with us while at the same time asking questions to figure out which carpets to show us.  We were served hot apple tea - twice, and only after such a long time did the haggling really begin. The trick is to seem rather uninterested, and start your offer at about 50% of their price.  But it's usually done quite amicably, without too much pressure, so it's all good.  Brad and Rachel left with two rough wool carpets in geometric patterns.  I splurged a bit and took with me a small (really small) 100% silk carpet.  I plan of using it as a wall hanging, it's too beautiful to walk on!

We got back to the hotel just in time to sit on the beach and watch the sunset.

We then went in to dinner. The food was buffet style of course, with plenty of options so that we were quite happy with every meal.  I think I had olives and some sort of creamy white cheese at every meal - so good!  After dinner, we sat ourselves in the lounge area with some drinks. We chatted and played cards while listening to the... music-making person in the corner.  Not sure what to call him: he had an electronic keyboard, which he was tolerable at, but he also proceeded to sing butcher crooner (a.k.a. lounge lizard) songs. The one thing he was pretty decent at was traditional turkish songs, which everyone seemed to enjoy, but he only sang a few of those. Too bad.

The next morning, we headed off to Ephesus.  It is the ruins of an entire city, including baths, library, houses etc., though only part of the city has been excavated.  Legend has it the Amazons first founded the city, but who knows?  In its heyday as a major port, it had about 200,000 citizens, the 2nd largest city anywhere.  We walked around the site with our guidebook, soaking in the history and the atmosphere.  It was fabulous, very impressive. There was one covered area, designed to protect the fragile frescoes and mosaics of the rich people's houses that had been excavated.  We were some of the few tourists who paid to go into that area, and boy was it worth it!

We then headed to the closest town, Selçuk.  There we first visited the Epehsus museum, containing some of the finds from 50 years of excavation on the site. 

After that, we wandered a bit until we found the Basilica of St John (the Apostle) at the top of a hill.  Selçuk is where St. John and the Virgin Mary came in about 50 A.D. to escape persecution.  The basilica is where St John is purported to have written his Gospel. The Basilica is in complete ruin, but enough remains to give an idea of the size and importance of this site.  It is also where the tomb of St John is located.

Just before we left the Basilica, as we were looking at the Isa Bey mosque, the call to prayer began.  It was a strange, peaceful yet impressive feeling to be at a site of such Christian religious import while listening to the song of the muezzin.  By the way, I really do love that sound!

We got back to the hotel early, and ended up in our room after dinner to watch some TV and just relax.  That was half the purpose of this vacation anyways. :-P

For Monday, we had been thinking of hopping on a ferry to the island of Samos, but we would have had to leave the hotel waaay too early in the morning, so we nixed that idea.  Instead, we slept in a litte, and then went back to Kuşadasi.  We found a nice hamam and had a turkish bath.  This is really what it sounds like: the purpose is to get clean.  First you sit in a sauna and sweat out some of your toxins.  Then you move to a comfortably warm room and lie down on a marble slab.  After a few minutes of cooling down, a swarthy Turkish man come to rub you with a kind of oversize exfoliating mitten and some soap.  Rinse off, then back on the slab. Next up, the man uses very soapy water which he foams up using a kind of linen pillowcase that he blows up with air.  This produces incredible amounts of foam, which he spreads around you and give you a brief and bracing massage along the way. Then you rinse off again and off you go. After this treatment, your skin is super soft, and apparently also tans extra well (but who cares about tanning). How relaxing!

We then went in search of a restaurant for lunch. We ended up right next to the harbour, where we chose a variety of fish and seafood dishes.  I'm not much of a seafood fan usually, but most of these dishes were fantastic! Especially these little fishies (anchovies? sardines? one of them, anyways) that were fried to a crisp - so they were fish fries, really. Yummy!

We strolled away the afternoon around Kusadasi and Pigeon Island, and returned to the hotel for another beach sunset watch.  For some reason, all three of us were exhausted at this point, so after dinner we went right back to our room.  We were all asleep quite early.  Now, this was a very good thing, because we had to get up at the unholy hour of 3 A.M. to catch the bus to the airport.

All in all, a wonderful little break!

And to wrap up this blog post, here are a few non standard pictures I took along the way:

Banana flower

Ancient scribble (translated) on a wall in Ephesus

Beware of falling woman?

The barman insisted on making me a drink. It's got 3 kinds of alcohol, about a kilo of sugar and every possible decoration... Undrinkable!

My favourite store sign of the weekend:

Ham chips, one of the greatest snack foods ever!

Token pretty flower

Every tourist took a picture of themselves in between these columns, touching them with arms outstretched as though holding them apart. I couldn't reach, so I improvised...

Stray cats EVERYWHERE, from the hotel to the ruins of Ephesus. And all of them little and fluffy!

Smile!

Adventure in Hungary

On the last day of September, most of the staff in my Terrestrial Environment Laboratory section took the afternoon off to go on a "team building activity". Well, ok, we just wanted to play hooky and have some fun, but the title gives a nice ring to it.

So we piled into a few cars and off we went, bound for far off Hungary, a whole... 40 kilometres away! :-P

Just outside the town of Sopron, there is a nice forested area. In the forest, there is an "adventure park". What's that, you ask?  It's a kind of athletic course high up in the trees, where you have to walk tightropes, balance on beams, use ladders and ziplines etc.  For those of you in the Ottawa/Gatineau area, there are 2 such parks nearby, one at Camp Fortune and one at Cavernes Laflèche.

OK, so we get there. get harnessed up, and then play around in the trees for a couple of hours.  However, they don't beat the two I just mentioned above: the Hungarian one was a little too reliant on sheer upper body strength (which I don't have at all), and the zip lines were low and short.  But still, we had a great time. I love these things!  It was also fun to see my colleagues looking silly hanging on for dear life. :-)

Once we were done, we went on a short walk on a "path" in the forest. OK look, the forest was lovely, very similar to ones back home, but a path should not be 10 feet wide and paved!

We ended up at a tower with a view of Sopron, Neusiedler Lake and Austria beyond the lake. It was some kind of historical site, although not too sure what because almost all the signs were in Hungarian. The only translated sign was quite hilarious, full of amusing mistakes:

By then we were starving, so we went bak into town to some restaurant with an unpronounceable name. The sign had a depressed-looking fox on it, so we nicknamed it the "Sad Fox restaurant".
A nice end to a lovely day!

IT Alzheimer's

OK, long time no post again. I really need to remind myself to do this more!  I have no idea what I did all September, so you'll pardon me if I skip most of that month.

The only really memorable event of the month was the sudden mental illness of my laptop.  The poor thing was about 6 years old, and had been repaired/wiped twice already. Nevertheless, it was working just fine when I decided to back up most of my files on a Friday evening.  Luck? Karma? In any case, by Saturday morning, my computer got sick. No, not a virus: some nasty malfunction caused it to forget everything.  All of my files disappeared, even my profile, and every time the computer turned itself on, it asked to register new software and whether I wanted a tour of my new computer. Even just logging out ant back in caused it to forget whatever I had just done.  And yet all the software ran just fine... This was my fist case of IT Alzheimer's. No fun!

OK, so basically the laptop is dead. Now I need to buy a new one. That's fine, I was planning on getting one at Christmas, so a few months early is not a big deal.  But wait, problem: in Austria, all the computers have German keyboards, which I definitely don't want.  I ask around, and discover there are only 2 options if I want an international keyboard: order from Dell (UK) and wait about 3 weeks, or order from Apple, pay double my budget but get the computer in a week.  Hmmm, not liking those options.

And then, inspiration strikes: an ex-coworker of mine from the CNSC is coming to Vienna next week for a meeting. Maybe I can convince my good friend Hemendra to purchase a laptop cand bring it to me.  And, being the nice guy he is, he of course does so.

So now I have a nice new laptop (which I just discovered has a touchscreen. Why is that?), and also confirmation that you really should backup your files regularly, you never know when your computer will lose it!

Friends, food and the zoo

This weekend was mostly another success, even though the weather mostly did not cooperate.

On Thursday, we had the Seibersdorf summer party out at the IAEA labs (in Seibersdorf, of course) where I work. We had a wonderful 30 degrees, and lots of sun. The party took place in the lunch "area" next to the cafeteria,  little outdoor area with tables, chairs and parasols. At lunchtime, a few hours before the party, we had new visitors: swarms of dragonflies (seriously, swarms!). It was quite funny to sit at the  tables and watch the insect specialists come around the corner and stop dead at the sight of the swarms. These are people that if you tell them there's a bug on their shirt, they will carefully pluck it off and examine it, then discuss. But none of them ventured an explanation for the swarming dragonflies, in fact the lunchtime conversation was relatively bug-free. Curious.

The party was not bad, although the food was medirocre. But it was nice to relax and chat with everyone. Little did we know we'd just jinxed ourselves, and that was the last bit of summer. The next day, things turned cloudy, rainy and 15 degrees cooler. Yuck!

On Friday evening, I had a nice quiet dinner with Tony and Owen at Da Capo.  The restaurant is quite nice, both indoors and out.  What I found funny is the name of the restaurant next door to it: The Gulash Museum. Wonder what's on the menu... I will definitely have to eat there one day!

Saturday started dull and dreary once again. But I wasn't that bothered by it.  Every September when the weather changes, I get into "fall cleaning" mode. I like to go through my stuff, reorganise, clean, declutter, etc. So that's what I did for a good chunk of the weekend.  On Saturday afternoon, though, I joined Owen, Jérôme and his two daughters Iris and Wilma (I kid you not) at Schönbrunn zoo. I hadn't been there yet and heard it was one of the best zoos in Europe so even with the crappy I was looking rather forward to it. 

We had a nice time, spent about 3 hours there.  We didn't cover the whole zoo, mostly because progress with a 3- and 6-year old can be kind of slow. We did see lots of animals, and watched the sea lions getting fed, with much jumping, splashing and hilarity. 

(see below for more pictures)

I also found myself wrangling two monkeys of the human race. I can't help it, I love to play with kids and they seem to love me. And the zoo is the perfect place to do it, I can act like a 5-year-old and not get strange looks from other grown-ups.  6-year-old Iris reminded me a bit of my niece Annabelle. She has curly blond hair, is stick thin, and talks. A lot. Basically, she took about a half hour to decide I was nice and that I could speak French (her first language), and then she took my hand and started talking and didn't shut up for 2 1/2 hours. She was still talking when I stepped off the U-Bahn and they were continuing on! And Wilma was a sweet, tired little girl. I had a great time.
(Iris and Wilma)

After the zoo, Owen and I went to Figlmüller's for face schnitzel. God, I love that place! We of course went to our favourite ice cream place for dessert. (Owen is my usual partner in crime for evening walks/ice cream). Then we parted ways and I went home and read an entire book. Lovely!

Sunday morning was, you guessed it, grey and rainy. I peacefully puttered around my apartment until about mid-afternoon. Then the sun made an appearane, so I felt the need to go out. Mark came into town and we went for a bike ride.  Not knowing our way around Vienna too well, we rode up the ring, along the Danube canal, and then started in a new direction by basically stopping at intersections and saying: "Let's go... thataway."  Only, we ended up in a sketchy part of town. On top of this, apparently every road there goes uphill. Then we spotted a landmark we recognized, aimed for it and got the hell out of Dodge.

We ended up at the Rathausplatz (city hall plaza). All summer, the plaza in front of City Hall has been taken over by various festivals, mainly the music film festival. At night, they play music-themed movies, concerts, documentaries, etc. During the daytime, the booths are also open, offering a variety of food and drinks. There are cute patio-style seating areas and nice music.  We were supposed to meet Owen and Ludo for dinner at 7 PM.  Since it was only about 5:45, we sat ourselves down and had some drinks, mojitos for Mark and very thick strawberry daiquiris for me.  We left just as the weather was turing cold and drizzly again. Met up with the guys at a nice Vietnamese restaurant for dinner, and even coaxed Mark into having ice cream for dessert.

What a wonderful weekend! Only one bad thing happened...

On Saturday morning, my computer imploded and/or was possessed by the devil.  It ate just about all my files, and continues to do so every time I turn it off and sometimes when I log off too.  It insists on thinking it's new, resetting itself to factory settings, welcoming me and offering tours of my "new" software, and reinintializing software.  Considering this computer is about 6 years old, has been wiped and reformatted 3 times, has been updated, its usb ports are wobbly and its touchpad is over-sensitive, I think this the last straw.  I was hoping it would survive until Christmas so that I could buy a new one in Canada. But I backed up some of my files on Friday evening (thankfully); it must have felt threatened and broke down before I could get rid of it, just to get the last word. Stupid piece of ...

The thing is, it is extremely difficult to get a laptop with international or English keyboard here, they are all German keyboard. The only options are ordering from the Apple store or going through Dell.at (Austria). But Macbooks are much more expensive than what I was looking to spend, and I'd still have to wait for some weeks for the order to come in. As for Dell, the Austrian website doesn't allow me to select the type of keyboard.  I would have to call their service centre (in Ireland, I'm told!) and then again wait weeks for delivery.  And none of the other providers (Dell.com, Tigerdirect, stores, etc.) deliver here.  So I had a problem.

But now a potential solution has come up: I have a colleague from the CNSC who is coming to Vienna this weekend for meetings next week.  He kindly accepted to go buy me a computer in Ottawa and carry it here for me. What a nice guy, I really hope we can pull this off. Otherwise I need to go to plan B, except I don't know what that is yet.  Cross your fingers!

OK, some zoo pictures for you:

Fish in space!

Disapproving bird

There are actually 2 elephants in this picture - you can just about see one foot of the second one.

Happy polar bear!

Albino peacock!

Itchy king penguins

Weekend fun

Well, August is over, and the summer weather seems to have gone with it.  Sigh!
Luckily, I had 2 great weekends in a row, with fun outdoor activities, so I don't feel like I wasted nice weather.

A couple of weeks ago, Ludo, Owen and I decided to go for a bike ride in the countryside.  We went to Neusiedler See (Lake Neusiedl), the biggest lake in the area, straddling the Austro-Hungarian border.  It's a very strange lake, really.  On average, it's less than 2 metres deep; it actually disappeared on a few occasions in history!  Most of the lake is surrounded by reeds. Not just a few, I'm talking vast expanses here!

OK, so I met Ludo and Owen at their place, and watched - patiently - as they figured out how to set up their new bike rack on their car.  About 45 minutes late, we were on our way! I gotta say, for all that is was a BMW brand rack (to fit with their BMW car), it felt like the bikes were not that secure. But all was well, me made it safely to our destination, a cute town called Rust.

Rust is wonderful!  Very charming little town, old and colourful, with a pretty church and lovely sights. The best thing, though, is that it is the "city of storks". There are storks everywhere, real ones.  It made my day to see that they really do make nests on top of chimneys, it's the kind of thing I've only ever seen in drawings in books, not even in photographs!

Upon arrival, and after I made like a tourist and took a zillion pictures, we decided that we had already expended enough energy, and found a little restaurant to have lunch. Much yumminess, and great local wine too.

Once we were re-energised, I rented  bicycle and Ludo and Owen took theirs off the car.  We set off towards the next town on the lake.  I'm told the path went along the lake. I myself wouldn't know, as the reeds were over 2 metres high and many many metres deep, so I never saw the actual lake!  It was a beautiful ride, just perfect weather with sun and mild temperature.  We rode about 10 kilometres, and then we got to the border. We stopped to go up onto a lookout of sorts, where I had a view of fields on one side, and on the other... reeds, with little sailboats in the distance.  I couldn't see water, so it looked like the boates were floating on the reeds.  Our cycling path then took us a little ways along the border. In this picture, Hungary is on the left of the road, and Austria on the right.

We went up a short but very steep hill, and got to an old border crossing, which we crossed.  We got off our bikes and considered which way to go.  Looking into Hungary, we saw hills - going up; back the other way was nice, flat Austria. Guess which way we went? 

On the way back, we detoured to a summer beach-like area to have popsicles.  This was a tropical summer fun spot: you must pay to enter, and line up for things like the snack bar etc.  And hundreds of people everywhere. Not appealing, no matter how hot it could get, but the Austrians seem to like it.

We got back on our bikes and rode some more.  The area is really gorgeous.  It's full of vineyards, producing yummy (mostly white) wines. 

When we got back to Rust, we packed he bikes up and started for home, driving on nice smaller roads rather than the highway.  On the way, we at a wine dealer, tasted half a dozen wines in 10 minutes, bought a few, and drove on.

What a lovely Sunday afternoon! Thanks guys!

Ludo and me at the lookout (Hungary behind us):

Owen and Ludo at the lookout (Austria behind them, Hungary on the right)

Trip part 3: Bregenz and area, and last days

Adelene and I left Munich and made our way by train to Bregenz. What a change! We went from a busy metropolis where even the tourists look hurried, to a quiet village with a seaside/summer haven feel to it. We got there just in time to dump our things at the hotel and run out to sit by the shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee in German). We watched the sun set in brilliant hues of orange and pink to the sound of softly lapping waves. Heaven! 

The next morning, we set out to Götzis, a nearby village, to meet old friends of my mother's, Elisabeth and Paul.  I had met them myself only once, when I was about 7 or 8 years old.  I knew they were not in the best of health, and thought we'd have a chat, a nice lunch, and then we'd be on our way.  Well, when we got there, Elisabeth and Paul brought us to their house, chatted (OK, Elisabeth chatted, Paul listened) and fed us a very nice lunch.  Right according to plan.  And then they proposed to take us for a car ride into the mountains.  We couldn't refuse such a nice offer, especially as we were not planning to go into the mountains and this was a bonus for us. Plus, the weather was absolutely fabulous (for once), so off we went. We drove up hairpin turns, through mountains and valleys, up to a mountain pass at an elevation of about 1750 metres. 

There we stopped to stretch our legs, grab a coffee at the pit stop, and go up a little bit of a trail that started there.  OK, this trail was serious stuff: no nice even trail wide enough to be comfortable.  No, this one was barely double the width of a single foot, with crumbly parts and bushes to scramble over.  Also, the mountainside at that point was at a pretty impressive incline, and on top of that Adelene and I were wearing sandals (we hadn't planned to hike up a mountain!)  Adelene gave up pretty soon, but I pushed on a little.  There were even parts that were dangerous enough that Paul had to show me in which direction to point me feet (down the incline at all times), how to test the ground before putting my full weight, etc.  I stopped a few 100 metres further, when I felt too scared to continue without solid hiking boots, a couple of those hiking sticks... and possibly someone to tie myself to. It was that steep a fall! But Paul was as sure-footed as a amountain goat. That family had lived there most of their lives, and going up a mountain had been a usual family outing for them.

Anyways, we drove through the mountains some more, to more fantastic views at every turn, and stopped a few more times on the way.  We ended up taking a break for an early dinner at Bludenz, a little town housing the Milka chocolate factory. Boy, were we ever disappointed when we saw it: we were expecting the smell of chocolate in the air, a big Milka sign and maybe a purple cow or two.  But what we got was the smell of beer from the brewery close by, and a boring factory with a big KRAFT sign (the parent company) on the front (little Milka sign on the back only). Sigh!  Oh well, at least the patio restaurant with its lovey view and good food was nice.  After that, we dropped off Elisabeth and Paul and returned to Bregenz.  We had a nice long walk along the shore to wrap up a lovely day.

The next day, we set off on the first ferry across to Lindau, a cute village on an island nearby on the Bodensee.  It was just gorgeous!  We wandered around, found Rapunzel's tower (complete with braid hanging out the window) and admired the decorated buildings. 

We then returned to Bregenz, where our friendly rain clouds had once again gathered to meet us.  There, we took the cable car up the nearest mountain, and sat at the cafeteria-style restaurant for an early lunch. Good thing too, because it got very busy by the time we left.  Even though it was drizzling a bit, we then walked a short trail that looped around a kind of open-air zoo of typical mountain animals. Anyone know the English word for the mountain goat type animal called "mouflon" in French and German?  ...   Mouflon!

After that, we went down to an area set up for a bird of prey show-and-tell.  We wandered a bit, looking at the eagles and hawks in their cages before sitting down to wait for the show to begin.  Once again, we chose wisely to get there early: the space was restricted, and they packed us in like sardines.  And then, yay for us, the skies cleared out and the sun blasted us.  So now we were stthe show began: one at a time, they let the birds fly out into the thermals coming up the mountain.  The birds were well trained to fly loops outwards then come back swooping low over the spectators' heads.  As the narrator mentioned, they were free to fly off, and a couple of times per season one of the birds would do just that. But they always came back.  In our case, the bald eagle did soar out of sight for a while, enjoing some updrafts further away on the mountainside, but it came back a few minutes later. It was a great show, even though I had to translate most of it for Adelene (the narration was in German only).

We took the cable car back down the mountain, wandered through the Bregenz old town area, but then hightailed it to our hotel. We were exhausted from the early rise, walking, drizzle, then pounding sun and heat during the bird show.  We had a long nap, and why not? We were on holidays!  After dinner, we got changed and then went out to the outdoor facility where we'd see the opera Aïda.

OK, here's the setting: the stage is floating on the water of the Bodensee, with parts that could sink into the water and others that could be moved and raised by cranes.  As we got settled, people were moving about on stage, playing guitars, chatting, praying, all kinds of things.  Turns out they were part of the show, a kind of prelude to the opera.  And then it began: what a show!  The staging was a bit confusing, in that it featured large blue feet covered in gold stars and the head of the Statue of Liberty, which had very little to do with the premise of the opera, which is about Egyptians beating Ethiopians in war, two women in love with the same man, and and Aïda and her love dying at the end (of course, what's an opera if no one dies?) 

The opera was fabulous, excellent singing for the most part, and inventive use of this stage, with some of the action and singing in the water, or even several stories high in the air.  A perfect end to our travels!

The next morning, we set off again by train, a long 7.5 hours to Vienna. That evening, we went to a movie and had dinner with friends of mine.

The next day, we walked around Vienna a bit so that Adelene could see some of the sights she'd only seen at night so far. It was a lovely morning, about 25 degrees and sunny.  We then took the train to Melk, some 80 km up the Donau (Danube) river, where there is a lovely monastery we wanted to see.  To our surprise, when we got there it was pouring rain! We debated what to do, and then decided to run to the first restaurant to at least get lunch while we waited for the next train back to Vienna. But we got lucky again, and the skies started to clear during our lunch.  So we did go to the monastery after all, and it was just amazing!

We then caught a boat that ferried us from Melk to Krems on the Donau, a nice 1.5 hour cruise with a view of crumbled ruins, cute villages and local vineyards. 

We decided to spend an hour or two in Krems, and set off on foot.  However, it seems we took the wrong turn.  We discovered a perfectly charming neighborhood, medieval style and full of little passages, staircases, flowers and cobblestones. But as time passed, we realised we were not in the "touristic" area, and rather far away from the train station.  We were on a schedule, you see, as we had concert tickets to a presentation of Vivaldi's Four Seasons at the Karlskirche. So off we went again.  On the way, we found a hilarious statue of a woman laughing.  We finally found the station, just in time to catch a train back to Vienna. 

Back in Vienna, we had a quick dinner and then went to our concert. During the concert, the weather changed again. By the time we were listening to "Winter", a storm was crashing outside. The thunder and lighting actually blended well with the music, and everyone including the musicians appreciated it.  After the concert, everyone kind of massed in front of the exit of the church, deciding if they should risk going out, as the lightning was still putting on a show.  However, the rain was very light, so Adelene decided to venture out in hopes we wouldn't get soaked - or electrocuted - before we got home.  We were again lucky: we made it back to my apartment just in time, and then sat in a dark room for a while just enjoying the light show in the sky.

On Adelene's last day in Vienna, we did some souvenir (and other) shopping, including salivating over such thins as designer bags and leather gloves.  But we were good, and showed restraint.  We took a break and enjoyed another latter and piece of Sacher torte.  We also took in a few more sights. For example, Adelene went up the 343 stairs to the top spire of St. Stephen's cathedral.  I'd been there already, and honestly had no desire to go up all those stairs again, so I ran errands until she got back. :-) 

In the evening, we met up with friends again for dinner at a churrascaria (Brasilian restaurant). Basically, we had 9 different types of meat... oh, and a few side dishes too.  Then, we went over to City Hall, where there is a cinema festival on, showing movies, recordings and documentaries about music.  Or so we thought: when we got there, we realised there was some sort of special event going on, rather like an open-air rave.  We stayed away from the rave area, and stayed around the -relatively- quiter section with the bars and food stalls.  We had a couple of drinks and then left our friends to return home.

A couple more random pictures:

On Sunday, Adelene flew back to Canada. End of a fabulous vacation. Sigh.