April 16th: On to Vienna

Today is our drive to Vienna...but wait, the hotel has a parting surprise waiting for us at breakfast. The hotel manager presents a birthday cake with a sparkler on top, which he brings to the table and lights. Along with that he pours beautiful glasses of Champaign for us. What a send off!

A big shout out to everyone at the Sheraton Hotel in Salzberg, you really have a great management team and fantastic staff and make guests feel like they are family. Thank you Lars and Marik for everything!!

Our VIP Lounge super hero is Marik, he made us super fantastic cosmopolitans each evening, what a special person he is! Marik is from Prague so he gives us a list of things to do, restaurants he likes and even makes dinner reservations at a hard to get into restaurant for us.

We are on the road but we ask our driver, and he agrees for a price, to take a detour through the beautiful Wachau Valley along the Danube River.  This is wine country and the hills are covered with vines on both sides of the river.  A few small villages occupy the valley and we stop to sample some wine, buy some and head on to Vienna.  

And then we arrive to Vienna  – we booked at the Ritz cause it sounds wonderful.  And it turns out to be absolutely wonderful.  From the moment we step in we are whisked away to the executive lounge, supplied with tasty chocolate and champagne and a registration card and after an hour or so of pampering, we head to our rooms.  Oh yeah, we also hear the magic words; “we have upgraded you”.   This upgrade was to a flat with two bathrooms, several closets, a living room and more chocolates.  

The lounge is run by Victor and he informs us they serve breakfast to order, snacks, deserts at all times, a nearly fully stacked bar, several wines to drink, a few beers and a hot entrée for dinner each day.  We are staying here!  We are not leaving until morning and already we regret we are only staying two nights.