schloss eggenberg

whilst in graz we visited the schloss eggenberg (eggenberg palace) which is on the edge of the city (it is easy to reach on tram number 1 if you are interested!).

on the sunday we visited it was free to enter the grounds and we enjoyed wandering around the corridors of the palace and the lovely gardens. it was really peaceful and felt like you were in the heart of the austrian countryside despite being only a 10/15 minute tram ride out of the centre of graz. i would definitely recommend a visit if you are in graz and have a spare couple of hours!

food in graz

as you know, i do love pizza, and we ate a great one at don camillo at franziskanerplatz.

we stayed at the hotel daniel and their buffet breakfast for €9 was SO good. they had everything you could think of including amazing breads, meats, cheeses, pastries, cereals & muesli, fruit, freshly boiled eggs... i could go on!

we climbed the many steps up the grazer schloßberg and then ate lunch at aiola upstairs. i must admit, we waited a very long time for our food but the food was great when it arrived (i ate the chorizo, asparagus linguine dish and kev had corn fed chicken on a wild garlic risotto). what made it better was how the restaurant handled it. the chef offered us both desserts on the house to compensate without us even mentioning a thing about the wait (sign of a good restaurant i thought). it was a lovely place to sit and enjoy a glass of wine in the sunshine.

yummy sardines and the best steak i can remember eating in a long time at the spiesesaal at the hotel wiesler (unfortunately the badly lit and blurry photo does not do it justice). i really loved the styling and decor of this restaurant, and it had amazing street art on the walls. i must say, a stay at the hotel wiesler looked rather amazing! (maybe if i save my pennies i can stay there next time!).

a wonderful weekend in graz

so after a 2 week blogging break i'm finally back with a new hard drive in my macbook and lots of photographs to share!

a couple of weekends ago kev and i got the train to graz for 2 nights (an easy 2 and a half hour journey from vienna). its the second largest city in austria but it has much more of a town feel to it. we were lucky as the weather was glorious, so we enjoyed lots of time outside exploring and soaking up the sun. we wandered the entire inner city over the space of 3 days and loved the feel of the city. we discovered a few great places to eat too, but more of that to come!

sad day in vienna

so, i've been unable to blog because our macbook sort of died. kev took it to the mac doctor today and they confirmed that the hard drive has failed. we had not backed up anything since february which basically means that we've lost all our photographs since then (including australia) *extreme sad face
it also means that i can't blog properly until we get the hard drive replaced and spend a small fortune!

but on a positive note it is a public holiday here tomorrow and we are going to graz on friday for a long weekend! we thought it was about time we started exploring more of austria and i can't wait!

i hope to be back soon......

snapshots from the weekend

my head is all mushy today and things seem to be going wrong. our kitchen sink has a leak, our tv is almost kaputt, and our macbook is sick (which is making me really panic!). it is barely working and i'm struggling to get this posted as the spinning colour wheel is making an appearance every 10 seconds (or as we prefer to call it, the spinney wheel of death!).

this past weekend we had fun but not much photo taking unfortunately. we went to ikea, had a mini spring clean at home whilst listening to bbc radio 6music, watched football and snooker on tv (does watching snooker make me old?), enjoyed sunday afternoon beers with friends, and cooked lots (including asparagus and mushrooms on toast with butter and worcestershire sauce. really good!). oh, and we also watched the hitchcock film vertigo for the first time. we are trying to watch more old movies.

a day trip to baden

a day trip to baden from vienna is really easy to do. you can just hop on the train and it takes approximately 25/30 minutes. we were so lucky because the public holiday on tuesday was glorious weather with blue sunny skies. most of these pictures were taken in kurpark. it was a lovely place to take a walk and then relax with some wine!