Today was an absolute picture-perfect day: About 73 degrees with the sun shining, and no wind. We couldn't have asked for anything better! We had a late start though; slept in until 1030 as we were up until 1am last night again :-o

Evelyn's friend Anita invited us to her apartment, and cooked us pasta with BearLech ( spelling?), which is the same leaf I wrote about from Germany. She made a delicious pesto with it, including some pine nuts and parmesean cheese. Very, very good...

We ate with Evelyn's other house-guest, Johnny, a Malaysian student studying in Singapore, on foreign exchange in Sweden...hehhe, yes that took a second to figure out :-P But he was on a break from school, and decided to travel Eastern Europe and end in Vienna. He had to drive all the way to Budapest to get a flight back to Stockholm, which sucks :-( We hope to meet up with him again when we are in Asia. Johnny, let's keep in touch!

Anyway, Evelyn, Troy, Johnny, Anita and I all shared funny stories about traveling, houseguests and snoring. Anita confessed she had one guest who snored so badly she was considering sleeping outside of her apartment on a matress in the hallway!!

So we returned home not too late, but then Evelyn showed us some videos of 2 Romanian roomates she had, studying Music ( the violin) in Vienna. Needless to say, they were incredibly talented, and only 19 years old...

The more we travel, the more Troy and I realize how much we have to learn, and how many gifts we are given.

Today we had a leisurely day renting out the city bikes. This is such a great system. There are about 20 stations throughout Vienna, and you can pick up/drop off a bike at any of these places. The bike is free for the first hour, and then 1 euro for each hour afterwards. This makes great sense for a place like San Francisco...Although the bikes would need gears ( these ones had only one gear >:-/ We will use our city bike card tomorrow too, before getting on to our night train.

We then went to see the Viennese Regalia, which included many pieces from the Holy Roman Empire, see pic. Troy is wearing the burger-king version of the most famous and prized coronation crown in Austria, which is about 1000 years old. Its slightly more impressive than the paperboard version crowing Troy in the giftshop.... :-)

We strolled through this amazing museum checking out all the old mantels, orbs, and swords of the past monarchies. Some very interesting pieces like the legendary unicorn horn ( which is not really from a unicorn ;-) ) and an agate bowl which was said to be the holy grail, but dates from 200 AD. There is a mysterious inscription which was not cut or inlaid into the bowl, which spells out Christ's name....I couldn't really see it though:-)


We also joked at the amount relics which claimed to have pieces of the original cross in them....There were about 20 in that museum alone ;-)

After that, we got some ice cream, and strolled through the streets in the sunshine, enjoying the Viennese late afternoon.

Tomorrow we leave on the night train to Venice. We have a gracious host, Tizano, for the last three days, but for the first one, Troy and I will find out how campgrounds in Italy are. Supposedly, they are quaint and clean, but we shall see! I am a little aprehensive about it, but I guess this is adventure, right?

We will write in another few days from Venice!

Tune in next time..