For this morning I’d planned a ten mile route that would take me past quite a few sights, and some areas of the city we would otherwise be unlikely to visit. I thought this was a route I’d be running by myself, but Carmen decided that with some half marathons coming up it would be good to get some longer runs in.

As I was keen to avoid the hottest part of the day, and hopefully see some of these sights from the outside with few tourists already around, I wanted to be running at 07:00. It was already far too hot though, so reduced the planned distance further, mostly by cutting out the lap of Belvedere. We ran south to the Danube canal, and on the other side of that quickly reached the Anker Clock which plays music at noon every day. Of course it was too early for the performance. I’d thought this area was Hafnersteig, one of the older parts of Vienna, but the search on Google Maps hadn’t selected the right place unfortunately - if I’d stuck to the plotted route on Garmin Connect we would have found it.

We came across the Marriage Fountain on our way to St. Peter’s Church, and then back-tracked to St. Stephen’s Cathedral as I realised we’d missed that. This became a bit of a loop as we returned past the church after seeing the Column of Pest, on our way to the Hofburg. We walked around some of the outside of that, and worked our way past the Augustine Church and the Albertina arts museum. This area was much busier than anywhere we’d come across so far, and had to take our time with crossing as we approached the Vienna State Opera house.

We managed to keep out the sun for a while whilst in the park around St. Charles' Church, and did the best we could with taking photographs there as a stage had been set-up in the water for the EuroGames. Staying out of the sun was not always easy though and we were getting quite warm despite the shorter distance.

I decided we’d reduce the miles further so was going to take the shortest route to the Prater, and found we passed the ‘Monument in honour of the soldiers of the Soviet Army’. This is actually right next to the Lower Belvedere Palace which I hoped we would return to later in the morning. I just hadn’t realised that’s where we were at this time.

The shortened route took us to the Stadtpark, where there’s a sign saying Wiener Walzer - the German for Viennese Waltz. We stopped for a few photographs there, and then went inside the park alongside the Wein Canal. Not only way it the shortest route now to Prater, but was also a chance for me to show Carmen the statue of Johann Straus, and the lake there.

Out the other side we soon reached the Danube Canal, and crossed that so we could them run alongside the canal as far as the bridge we’d crossed a few times in the day prior to this. A side street near the bridge took us into Leopold Park, notably the place where Olympic athlete Eliud Kipchoge recorded the first ever sub-2 hour marathon.

As we entered the park we walked to various attractions, heading in the direction of the Riesenrad - the giant ferris wheel. It seemed we were the only ones there as if it was some sort of abandoned fair ground that was still in good repair. I could see the gondolas for the wheel were larger than I’d realised, but it was at least another sight ticked off our list.

The crossing between Prater and Praterstern is rainbow coloured, and around there I also got to photograph a Purple Emperor butterfly. We do get them in the UK, but I’ve never seen one, and certainly never expected to photograph one up close with only a mobile phone.

I directed us towards Augarten, and we took some more walking breaks along the way. Not long after we entered the park we did our final bit of running, and finished at 6.5 miles, just in view of one of the flak towers. It was one of two third generation flak towers in Vienna’s Augarten; this one being a gun tower, and the other being the lead tower.

The two flak towers in Augarten were constructed by the Luftwaffe as anti-aircraft defences, and civilian air-raid shelters during the Second World War. Now they’re just fenced off relics of that time. Whilst the one in front of us was damaged, the other may one day repurposed as some others around Vienna have been.

With this final sight seen, we sat on the bench for a while. I found it uncomfortable though as it seemed some insects taking shelter in the shade had taken a liking to me and were biting me all over. It was hard to resist scratching the bites on our walk along the sun-baked paths back to our apartment on Vereinsgasse.

Once showered, changed, and ready, we took the tram to Belvedere, and booked our tickets on the way there. The earliest we could get was 13:15 which would likely mean over an hour before we could go around Upper Belvedere, but I hoped we could either use the cafe, or look around the rest whilst we waited.

After an initial walk in the wrong direction due to a confused compass around the tall buildings, we reached the entrance to Belvedere Palace. The gardens between the upper and lower palaces were fairly big, but completely exposed to the sun. Today was recorded as the hottest day in history for the planet, and whilst that is as a global average, Vienna was certainly contributing well to that average. We tried to keep out of the sun when we could, but wandered down to the Lower Palace to look around the inside.

It was fortunately cooler inside, and after showing out ticket we looked around. It seemed Lower Belvedere at least was more of an art gallery. It didn’t really interest me, but we were at least out of the sun. The Orangery has been turned into another gallery, a darker one, but this was at least cool too, so we lingered there longer. I briefly went out into the sun to photograph the privy garden, but Carmen did the sensible thing of staying indoors.

As we’d still got some time I thought maybe a drink from the cafe wouldn’t be a bad idea, especially as they’d got apple strudel too. That was one of the foods I was keen to have whilst in the country. We both went for an Austrian herbal lemonade for €4.40 each, and a slice of strudel. The drinks arrived relatively quickly, but the strudel seemed to require a much longer wait. We saw people arrive, be served, and have their meal delivered whilst we waited.

Time was ticking on and I was now getting nervous about how close to our tour time for Upper Belvedere we were getting. Eventually we reached the time of the tour, so I went to speak to the waitress to get an idea of how long we’d need to wait. She seemed confused, and thought I wanted to order some, but I explained we’d already ordered some and it hadn’t arrived. After a bit of back and forth I gave up and suggested that we just wanted to pay. She told me to go back to my seat and she’d come over for us to pay.

After a few minutes had passed she came for us to pay, and the strudel was still on the bill. I pointed out we’d not received the strudel, so she said she’d go and get it and disappeared quickly. I went off after her, and explained we no longer had time for them to now make the strudel as we needed to be at our tour.

“You’ve got time”

“No, our tour started five minutes ago, I’d like to pay now and go join it”

“You can still go”

Eventually she agreed, and took the strudel off the bill, and then went over to our ticket in the kitchen that had been waiting there for over half an hour to be processed. We’d seen reports of the service in restaurants in Vienna as being ‘bad’. Maybe it’s not that bad really, more frustrating, but we had at least experienced that side of it now as well. Another thing to tick off the list, had it been there.

Once I’d paid, we rushed up to Upper Belvedere, and was fortunately able to go straight in. That was a relief that we hadn’t missed our chance to go in. However it quickly dawned on us that this was an art gallery inside the palace, and not the normal sort of palace or fancy house that you can simply look around. Neither of us was interested in visited art galleries, so we worked out way around it quickly, with the only real pause being at Gustav Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’ as it a piece I’d covered in high school. I’d wasted around €56.60 for the two of us, when I think really just wandering around the grounds for free would have been enough. It was however a lesson learned, to check what is actually inside these palaces. My planning spreadsheet did note that ‘The Kiss’ was located here, but I’d not noted that it was actually just a gallery.

I wanted to make sure Carmen enjoyed the sightseeing days, so thought we could visit the Imperial Apartments or the Sisi museum in the Hofburg. Perhaps the day could yet be salvaged. We took the tram to the Burgring, and entered the Burggarten at the entrance with the Mozart memorial. Our plan now was to find somewhere to sit, and it took almost a whole lap of the park before we found a bench in the shade where we could eat the packed lunch I’d made earlier.

We were both warm, and I think Carmen had experienced enough of the heat for today, and was ready to just look for some souvenirs and head back. She’d seen a souvenir shop on our run this morning, but couldn’t remember where she’d seen it, so we retraced our steps from that and found it to be located near the Column of Pest.

A couple of fridge magnets later, we walked back to where were’d just come from, near the Burggarten and crossed the road to where there was an Aida where we thought we might be able to get some strudel. Our second attempt after our morning attempt had failed. When we entered I noticed quickly how pink the place was, and the focus of this seemed to be cake, alcohol, and coffee, so I was unsure how likely it’d be that I could get something to drink here too as I drink neither of those.

The menu was actually pretty good, and we were both able to get a non-alcoholic drink with a very large slice of apple strudel and cream for €25. Maybe the cafe in the morning hadn’t worked out, but our afternoon exploration had found an even better option, so it had worked out for the best.

We took the tram back after that, and got to the apartment around 17:00. We stayed there for a few hours, and just after 20:00 walked the short distance to Dolce Vita, located near the tram stop we’d started using. I had chicken with roast potatoes and salad, and Carmen had the biggest Caesar salad I’ve ever seen, with a side of fries. One of the two pieces of chicken I had was slightly undercooked so I left it, but the rest was filling enough anyway. There was so much food, that Carmen was able to take about half of hers away with her to finish tomorrow. Whilst this was the most expensive meal we’d had at €60 (inclusive of a 15% tip) with a soft drink for the two of us, it was also the biggest by far. The service was good, even if they did initially forget to brink cutlery until I pointed out we couldn’t eat the food without it, and came with a complimentary martini aperitif that I didn’t bother with.

When we got back to the apartment we RSVP’d for the reception of Carmen’s cousin’s wedding, and checked-in for the flight that was now quickly approaching.