WE CAME.......WE SAW......2019

                           

Hi could you all quickly gather here for a selfie…..I've missed you so much!

Now this is really embarrassing, where do I start?

Let’s try the beginning, I cannot believe the last time I blogged was last year, October 2018 😩

Please accept my apologies but you see life happens, hopefully I shall be able to salvage what little shreds I have left of my reputation with this my post today. You see it's that time of the year again, you know….annual trip with The Crew ‘tinz’ and on a positive note I've brushed up on my skills so we have our first video uploaded at end of blog!!

The Crew: Yemisi, Foluke,Uloma, Gabby, Moi & Ada

                            
                

Orangery Garden, Schonbrunn

                           

Team Heathrow: Clementina and Eunice

                                      

It's going to be a long one so brace yourselves for a bumpy ride. I shall not be overloading you with details of the usual drama we encounter every year when choosing a destination, however one major departure from the script this year was our young adults did not come along for two really very, very, very important reasons. First was that dates we chose coincided with Notting Hill carnival for a third year running and they had no plans to miss out again (yeah really important, I know!) The second was that they wanted to sun worship ‘as in’ visit a warm climate. We asked whether they actually planned to sunbath, they replied that wasn't the point. They weren't coming this year and that was it! So they went off and had their own holiday by themselves and opted for a trip to Portugal 😢

Ada, Yemisi, Foluke, Uloma & Gabby at train station in Vienna

  
               

So that how we found ourselves in...D R  U  M  R  O  L  L Vienna, Austria🇦🇹 

My people, the Hills were literally alive with the “Sounds Of Music” Maria style! 

It was a ‘Doe a deer, a female deer with ray a drop of golden sun’ affair. All we the ladies needed to complete the image would have been some aprons and the guys, short ‘nika’ with braces. Austria has always conjured nostalgic memories of that film for me. 

Duty Free At The Ready!

                      

By my recollection we arrived Vienna about 9am in the morning (I bet you're thinking as if ‘9am’ could have been “in the night’, right?🙄) think what I've just done is called tautology! 

Our bellies are full as Uloma had handed us a breakfast pack each at airport. 

I know I've started with all my distractions and detours that make my blogs so long sorry, but I just can't help myself. 

  

Anyways this year ‘The Crew’ are 8 in number, 6 of us (myself, Ada, Yemisi, Gabby, Foluke and Uloma) took off from Luton while the other 2 (Eunice and Clementina) set out from Heathrow. The end justifies the means abi, las-las we go dey alright! 

We buy a cheap and cheerful 7-day travel card from the airport for €17 this grants us access to bus, train, underground and tram for the duration of our break. I’ll restrain myself from a mega rant about UK and the cost of public transport, how do we cope?

Yemisi, Foluke, Moi & Uloma at airport.

                                    

Foluke, Ada, Yemisi, & Gabby's arm on arrival at Joyn Apartment

             

                    

Yemisi, Gabby, Ada, Moi, Uloma & Foluke

                                          

Our Opera Ticket Seller!

                                              

Love wantin-tin!

                         

We catch a train from airport to the Quartier Belvedere area we are staying at Joyn Apartments  this is about a 2 minute walk from the station, we had left home since 4am so it had been a long morning. We have motto when on holiday ‘No day is to be wasted’ so no dilly dallying on arrival. We down tools, rest our feet and agree to meet in lobby for 12 noon.

                                             

Where we at!

                                                      
As per usual the tourist guides among us have done their research and already know where we are heading. While the likes of me, the follow-follow brigade, just tag along. If they led me to a pit hole I would possibly follow, due to my laziness and lack of interest for reading maps or signage.   Our head guide, Mr Motivator Gabby is at the reception ‘at the ready’ armed with his backpack, water, walking boots and map in hand. At this point ‘abeg’ let me digress small, what's it with our people? They go on holiday and will be packing ‘shu’ and bag ‘upandan’, colour co-ordinated and all. The best part of our holidays is their casual nature, there is no fashion parade. We literally throw our stuff in our respective cabin sized luggage a day before the trip; jeans, jogging bottoms, hoodie, ‘pint’ bra and possibly one frock in case of ‘incasity’ and then we’re good to go!

                                                      Our Best Sides..

Uloma with Gabby in hand!

                                                      

Yemisi posing!

                                                              

                                                              

                 

Ada displaying her water carrying skills.

      
                                                

Me being me!

                                                               

Foluke alive with the sound of music.

                                             

Clementina & Eunice

   

Eunice #teamBA

                                                           

Uloma, Yemisi, Gabby, Foluke & Ada @ Naschmarkt

      

Enroute Sigmund Freud Museum

We head towards ‘the road’ I sincerely apologise I was ‘dulling’ slightly on this trip and not paying particular attention to the names of places, hence my reference to ‘the road’ 🙄.

We catch the tram and head towards ‘town’ (noticing a pattern here?) the weather is also ‘bright’ (I'm also not one to check weather forecasts, so never one to give an accurate temperature read) 😐

Ada bathing at quirky spray fountain!

                                                    

We jump down from tram and navigate ourselves through the traffic and across the wide roads, one of my fears when on holiday is being ‘jammed’ by a motor because of traffic coming from opposite direction one is accustomed to. We wait obediently for traffic light to change then we do a double take 😲  ‘What's going on here? What are those people doing inside the traffic light?’ 

No my people it's early, we’ve not been drinking, Let's introduce you to ‘The Viennese Traffic Light couples’ you’ll find them throughout Vienna. They have been part of Vienna’s street scene since May 2015 to mark the Eurovision Song Contest hosted in Vienna that year.  These traffic lights were installed to stand for cosmopolitanism and tolerance. The traffic lights show images of couples in love, not only male/female images but also male couples and female couples. Interesting! I spent the rest of our trip peering at traffic lights and trying to get pic to show you guys eventually, it was Ada to rescue who managed to capture ‘foto’ without motor jamming her!

Viennese Traffic Light Love Couple.

  

                                                

We arrive at Karlskirche (St. Charles’s Church) one of Vienna’s greatest and most interesting buildings, a baroque church on the south side of Karlsplatz of Vienna, the architecture is both decorative and theatrical.  This church was built to impress, when the plague broke out in 1713, Charles VI pledge to erect a church in gratitude for deliverance of the city this was the result!  We sit on the edge of small lake situated in front of the church, licking ice cream and marvel at the scenery. 

Karlskirche - St. Charles's Church.

                     

Vienna offers stunning architecture and culture and it's a great place for taking photos with all the lovely statues and work of art around the city as you will see from my pics. 

Opera also plays a big part in the culture and the city is littered with costumed ticket-sellers selling tickets for concerts for tourists featuring popular pieces by Mozart and Strauss performed by costumed musicians. A few of us want to visit the opera and enter into dialogue with a seller and buy tickets for the next evening. I'm not really interested but want to get a pic of this costumed ticket seller for you guys and then I let my naija DNA take over and don't really think about my actions. I flip out my phone to snap him. Before I know it the ticket seller has used his hand to block his face and tells me he does not really mind me taking his pic however  I should have asked his permission. If the ground could have opened up I would have entered, ‘shame catch me’, more so because of the calm manner in which he told me, I felt like a 5 year old being told off. Lesson learnt! 

Yemisi, Uloma, Eunice, Moi, Clementina & Foluke at Bellevue Hotel.

                   

Shop N Drop: Eunice & Clementina

             

While we ‘The Luton 6’ are navigating Vienna, you may wonder ‘Where The Heathrow team At?’ They my people are living their best lives at their hotel, not really into this our tourism thingy they ain't come out to play 😩. So we decide to go and visit them at their hotel which is on ‘the other side of town’. Please no insults I may not know name of area, but I managed to recall name of where they stayed ‘Hotel Bellevue’. We show up and they are having their dinner in the restaurant, wine chilling in bucket of ice🙄 Let me introduce you to Clementina and Eunice!

They had ordered Viennese Schnitzel, a very thin, breaded and pan fried cutlet made from veal, one of the best known specialities of Viennese cuisine, and is one of the national dishes of Austria. We could tell by the look on their faces and plate that they not enjoying it, they have peeled off the breaded crust and placed in one corner of their plates. I bet they saw meat on the menu and this attracted them, expecting sirloin steak or Suya!  We join them at the dinner table and exchange stories about how we found the journey to Vienna. For some reason we’re the only people in the dining room, it was empty and really quiet expect for one waiter who kept hovering around the table. We asked him for bottle of still water and he explains that they only serve tap water at the hotel because Vienna has the cleanest water ever! Through out our trip we found this to be the case, sparkling water readily available at restaurants but not still water, tap water only.  I've done my research and here is the answer from the streets of Google: 

“It's not for nothing that Vienna is the best city in the world to live in! Vienna can be proud of its tap water. After all, the city is supplied with 400,000 m3 of fresh spring water daily from two mountain spring pipelines from the areas around Schneeberg, Rax, Schneealpe and Hochschwab.”

You can all thank me later for this info, no rush. 

After drinking our ‘tap water’ we check their hotel accommodation and they accompany us back to our apartment, on the way we stop at a local supermarket to buy ingredients for breakfast as on this trip we’ve gone self catering. 

Oh dear I'm just reading over this post to check for typos and gbagam’s ( bad grammar) and can't believe I've only covered day one 😩. I'm really gonna do some fast track stuff here and you folk are going to look at LOADS of pics, cos what I'm writing is a blog not a novel oh.

Swinging on our lobby swing.

                         

It's A Draw: Louise Vuitton 1-1 Eunice!

                    

Wakey Wakey day 2 is here, we make breakfast and then meet in the lobby, which had the loveliest swinging sofa. Every morning we would meet here and take turns in ‘Swinging on the swing’. My fear was was that it would buckle under our weight but it accommodated 3 people comfortably and rocking on it gave one the most therapeutic feeling ever. In fact the first few lines of this blog post were written whilst swinging on it.

Today as we head for ‘town’ we have agreed we would be meeting up with The Heathrow 2 at some point later. They have come on holiday mainly to shop😩. Through out the trip it was often the case that when we met up they’d would always have their heavy shopping bag in tow. Contents were mainly shoes or bags, Vienna is known for its exclusive stores of luxury brands 🙄

Nearest I came to shopping was eating a meal outside Gucci with them one evening! 

Dining alfresco: Moi, Eunice, Foluke & Clementina

                                             
                                          

Late night visit to Cafe Central: Clementina, Foluke, Moi & Eunice

                            

Uloma & Foluke.

                             

Moi & Eunice 

                       

This was one of our best days, as we jump off the tram our first port of call is Vienna’s Naturhistorisches (Natural History Museum) and always one to take advantage of a photo we goof around with a cute statue of a bronze elephant at the entrance. 

Uloma, Yemisi & Ada at Natural History Museum.

                                       

Moi with Ada.

                                                             

From here we stroll  towards The Hofburg which today serves as the official and work place of the President of Austria for centuries this palace was the seat of the rulers, the buildings are magnificent.  We visit the imperial Apartment’s and The Spanish Riding school that are also locate at the there. By now we bowled over by Vienna’s wealth of culture and feel we need to lighten up a bit and decide to go for a horse carriage ride. The horses are lined up outside the Hofburg, so we all 5 of us climb on and embark on a 30 minute tour around Vienna’s historic city centre. Our horse rider tour guide is very chatty and asks if we come from Manchester as apparently he's a Manchester footie fan, so we ask which of the teams he supports and he tells us there is only one Manchester team 🙄

     

                                           

Yemisi, Gabby, Ada, Uloma & Moi at Hofburg.

Queuing At Cafe Central

                                                       

    

Uloma at Cafe Central.

                                                      

It's lunch time and obviously it's all roads to Vienna’s Cafe Central, a long standing venue for Viennese pattestrie with historic links including Freud and Trotsky who purportedly used to read the papers there! If you think the Brits can queue…. You got nothing on this place. 

Opened in 1876 this cafe is still drawing traffic till now.

After a 2-hour queue (yes 2 hours) the glitz decor, cathedral shaped ceiling and world class cakes made it worthwhile. We each ordered different cakes and Crocodile Dundee Yemisi (you'll understand when you see pic of hat he brought along to Austria!) ordered their signature warm apfelstrudel (apple pie). 

I will let the pics do the talking! 

Let Them Eat Cake (literally!)

   

                                                

That afternoon we met up with the Heathrow 2, surprise-surprise no shopping bag in sight! They are at a food market and tucking in to their ‘night food’, they have learnt their lesson and there is no schnitzel in sight this time only meat, meat and more meat! We join them and chillax for the rest of the evening. This is same evening some of the crew go to the opera. They may wish to share their experience in the comments as I was not there as opera is so NOT up my street, I'm more of a Naira Marley, Davido type of girl. 

Clementina & Food together like 5 & 6.

  
                                                    

Eunice with Foluke at Food Market.

                                              

That night upon return to our apartments it's time to render our account, an interesting and intriguing part of our trip! In the course of the day when paying for activities, one of the crew usually pays for everyone to avoid all of us pulling out purses and looking for change. After a day or 2 Ada who could only have been an Accountant, Scrooge or Shylock in her former life flips out calculator, piece of paper and pen.  Let the games begin……… myself, Uloma and Foluke sit around the table telling her what we have spent and on what. Based on this info, she draws up a very basic invoice on this scrap of paper and issues one to each of us giving a breakdown of how much we owe each other. When her hubby Gabby is issued with his invoice about 1am the sleep clears from his eyes sharp-sharp even though his invoice is relative small in comparison with others, he starts knocking at our door in the middle of the night to settle his bill with each of us😩🙄😂

Flip side of the coin is Yemisi……..when he wakes up next morning  to find Ada had slipped his invoice under his door in the middle of the night, he comes charging to her room to give a war and peace speech about how where he comes from they don't ask for money early in the morning👀. Apostle will hear this!

This is a true story, I actually took pic of invoice for you guys to see 👇🏾

Ada'a Invoice for Yemisi.

                                 

                                                        

On that note it's a wrap………. to be continued, more pics and yawa to follow in part 2.  

Thank God it's Friday. Have a fab weekend. 

                                          Sneak Preview: Day 3 Our 1st Video

Jollof rice way dey for bottom pot today….. go dey top of cooler tomorrow ~ Unknown

💅🏾