Last Friday after work I hopped on a flight back to Vienna, giving me enough time to get things ready for Adrienne and Kiersten to arrive early Sunday morning after taking the night train from Venice. The extra day also gave me some time to see a few friends that are in town, although most everyone is still spread out over all corners of the world.
Starting Saturday, it rained fairly non-stop the entire time we were there, and of course the weather forecast is pretty unhelpful. The times they said only "mostly cloudy" it would be pouring, and when they were sure it would pour non-stop all day we got cloudy with peaks of sun. We basically decided just to go about doing what we wanted to do with little regard for the weather. So we got a bit wet.
I was mostly just really excited for these two to be here. Kiersten studied abroad in Vienna 10 years ago back when we were in college so it was fun to see all the places she used to go back then, and this is still part of Adrienne's inaugural European trip. Of course it would have been nice if the weather was picture perfect while they were here, but we definitely managed just fine. Chilly rain lends itself nicely to long relaxed dinners of cozy warm Austrian food.
Getting soaked at Schönbrunn...and loving every minute of it
Plenty of fancy coffees and cakes
Adrienne soaking up the ambiance with the live piano music
And the rain did stop long enough for us to walk down Kahlenberg. This is the one activity I was going to be really sad about if we didn't get to do. When Ryan and Teresa were here back in November it took us several tries going up there, but we finally got one day with a view. I was a little worried these two would miss out completely, but the clouds were high enough that you could still see everything fairly well from up there.
The grapes still on the vines
I didn't take hardly any pictures over these 6 days, partially because it's hard to juggle a camera and an umbrella...and partially because I have lots of pictures of these places and I'm trying to edit a little better, but really it was just more fun to watch these two experience this city I have grown to love so much.
The view from Dachboden at the 25 hours hotel
A nice evening stroll to see everything so perfectly lit at night
This makes me a bit nervous, but even though it was still August, it felt like early October. The leaves on many of the trees are already changing and falling off, which combined with the chilly rain made it seem much later in the season. I seriously hope we aren't totally messing with the trees and we'll still get a proper fall in another month or so.
A nighttime trip to Prater. Apparently if you go fairly late on a random chilly Wednesday night at the end of August, pretty much nobody is there
video courtesy of Adrienne's instagram
And then of course, as we're all leaving Thursday, the sun returns.
Aerial shot of Geneva from the flight back. Whatever flight plan we were in had us going way past the city and turning around to land, so we were still really high up making this first pass.
And now I only have about 3 weeks left in Geneva before I'm back to Vienna. These few days were a perfect little break and a nice feeling of home, both in Vienna and with these two girls. The 3 of us went to the same college, started working together 10 years ago, and all moved to NYC at the same time. We've shared some of the best times and definitely some of the worst times over those years, and being anywhere in the world with them is always wonderful.
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