After leaving Klagenfurt, and because we still had time left on our vignette, we drove to Vienna, the capital of Austria. We had decided on heading south, but when we looked at the weather forecast app for Slovenia, it said rain, rain & more rain. So we decided we needed to visit Vienna (Wein) instead. The same weather app assured us that the sun would shine and the temperatures would be in the high teens for the whole of the week. So, feeling excited to explore the city, we checked ourselves into the Wein Stellplatz, a stones throw from the metro station.
The lady in reception couldn’t have been more helpful and loaded us up with lots of reading material, a map with all the information we needed plus a free mug lol.
The following day we took the metro into the centre. We were blown away by the City Hall/Library, yet another amazing place we’ve seen on our travels.
We were recommended a visit to the Lipizzaner horses, at the Spanish Riding School but unfortunately the next scheduled show was the following weekend. We did however, find an International cinema called Artis that was showing the new Bohemian Rhapsody film in English.
What a brilliant film it turned out to be!!
It was then time to leave Vienna and Austria and head East as our 2nd 10 day vignette had nearly run out.
We loved Austria, and Vienna is now our 2nd favourite city so far (second only to Stockholm, just because it doesn’t have an ABBA Museum lol). The public transport was excellent too and not expensive to use.
All in all we spent 2 days exploring Vienna. We rode the yellow tourist tram on the Ringstrasse looking at all the amazing buildings.
We visited the foyer of the Opera House
and went up on to the roof of St Stephens Cathedral.
We were sadly too early to see all the wonderful stuff that they were erecting in the name of Christmas, including the market stalls and ice rink and we were a bit too early to see the lights.
But, it’s somewhere I’d definitely go back to if I got the opportunity again, especially in December!!
The stellplatz we stayed at was more than adequate and their WiFi enabled me to upload all the missing photos onto the blog.
We crossed from Austria to Slovakia and called at the fuel station on the border to buy a vignette. They took the registration number of Harriet and printed out an A4 receipt instead of a window sticker. We carried on to the capital, Bratislava. It’s not far from Vienna in miles but it’s a long way from the posh high end city that we left. It’s definitely the poor neighbour, but interesting all the same. We enjoyed our day exploring.
So, going for the hat trick, we headed for Budapest. Crossing from Slovakia to Hungary had been the first time we’d encountered a “border”.
Driving to the Hungarian border control was a little bit confusing as we weren’t a car or a lorry, so, being the lorry driver he is, Andy chose to follow the HGVs. We parked up and walked to the window where the lady was selling Vignettes. You only need them if you’re driving on the motorways and express ways but we’d rather be safe than sorry, so paid the minimum 28€ for 10 days. The most we’ve paid so far, in any other country, had been 10€, so it’s not cheap. Good job Harriet is under 3.5tonnes! They only accept cash (in Euros or Hungarian Florins). So after checking through our vehicle documents, the lady smiled and sold us a vignette.
We did quite a bit of research on where to base ourselves in Budapest and found a campsite open all year called Arena Camping.
It’s far enough out of the city but easily accessible on the metro. So after a day chilling out washing and cleaning, tomorrow we’ll be off exploring again.
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