In Vienna

Since all of us but Carol skipped the morning's Eagles Nest optional excursion, we got to sleep in and have a late breakfast. (Carol really enjoyed her excursion and was glad she went.) Breakfast for us was an easy and quiet affair on the 15th floor. All the views from the Austria Trend Europa were beautiful. It was easy for us to ignore the nearby cranes from our room. After breakfast, we walked past the Bahnhof (train station) to an adjoining mall and found what I was looking for at the Apotheke. Then we walked through the grocery store where we found last night's dumplings in the meat case. Huh? We got ice for our water bottles and put our feet up and relaxed until 11am. We were closer to 10 people waiting outside with our luggage when the bus arrived after 11:15. The people on the bus mostly left as we loaded for their pee stop. We stopped for lunch after 12:30pm at a truck stop cafeteria place again. Today it was Landzeit. There were complimentary restrooms here and that was better than yesterday's voucher system. Downside was that tap water was unavailable today. Oh well. I think we all ate lighter today than at Rosenbergers. The biggest upside today was that Stephane seemed to have undergone some kind of attitude adjustment today over the 1st 2 days and acted properly and tried harder to give topical and timely information. He was great until we approached Vienna and he said nothing for an hour, then in heavy traffic within sight and sitting outside the hotel, he tried to disjointedly communicate what he had of tomorrow's itinerary. Why? Why not give that information in a quiet calm manner while everyone is seated and can get out pens and paperwork and make notes? I don't understand. Anyway, as he told us, you can either check tonight or early tomorrow morning the sign I post in the lobby. Right,  shift the responsibility to us. He actually said this morning over the microphone on the bus that he guessed those of us not on the morning excursion realized that we had bought only the bones with no meat of a tour from Trafalgar (those with the options he keeps iterating are getting the Trafalgar Top tour) and are only entitled to a bus ride and hotels. I am pretty sure that I didn't see anything like that in Trafalgar's marketing material. Since Stephane is now the tour operator for all intents and purposes, and that is his view of the situation, Trafalgar's marketing material is moot and it is what it is. I cannot recommend Trafalgar Tours. We drove out of Salzburg past Lake Mondsee. We drove through mountain valleys along rivers, through agricultural and dozens of villages with steeples. Our afternoon pee break was actually at Melk Abbey! We weren't touring or entering, but we parked in the tour bus lot with the others and used the complimentary toilets. You could enter up to the 2nd courtyard without a ticket, so you could admire the exterior. That was a shame as we wound up being there almost 30 minutes and I'm sure at least once in the past we had toured it in about an hour. We are pretty far out of Central Vienna at the Renaissance Wien. I would call it within walking distance of Schonbrunn Palace. We are close to 7km from Stephansplatz in the city center. We got rooms on the 1st floor. They are smallish but contemporary in black and white and quiet. They have minifridges and a sel-service ice machine one floor up. I think we are all satisfied for 2 nights. It is unfortunate that our bare bones top tour couldn't put us inside the Ring. But we did know this when we booked. We had a good dinner directly across the street at Valenta's Stam-Biesl. Other than Mom, we all ordered dishes that had been ordered last night. It was less expensive than in Salzburg's Old Town, but we aren't in a tourism center here. We were not charged for tap water and we got almost a double pour of Gruner Veltliner for the 3 ladies. The bad news was that the choice of green salad, french fries or parsley potatoes Mom & I were given as choices were not included in our meal but we were charged 2.40 each for them! After dinner, it was still nice out and cooler than it had been inside the restaurant so we walked a couple of blocks to a Gelateria. Mom & Clay each got a cup. We like Gruner Apfel. That is green apple.