{"id":13363,"date":"2026-09-16T08:57:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T20:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/?p=13363"},"modified":"2026-09-23T15:28:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T03:28:18","slug":"monday-14-vienna-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/16\/monday-14-vienna-liverpool\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday 14 Vienna – Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post also got wiped. I promise I\u2019ll go back through and add some piccies, although Gavin says most of my registered subscribers are probably spam.<\/p>\n

I must say I couldn\u2019t understand why I had such a big following in China.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Still no news from Gavin – should I be worried? Here are some notes about yesterday, also stored elsewhere in the event of data related cataclysm. I promised I wouldn\u2019t post anything new but what the hell.<\/p>\n

Our last day in Europe. Our flight was midafternoon but it was Ryanair, and Kirsten had watched enough airline reality shows to know we\u2019d better aim to get to the airport early. It still gave us the morning free, so we decided to go to a famous local art gallery the Belvedere, that is housed in yet another palace. It\u2019s most famous for its collection of Gustav Klimt paintings, including \u201cThe kiss\u201d but not including \u201cthe woman in gold\u201d since a famous war reparations court case in 2008. It currently lives in New York. His work overlaps with Art Nouveau which is a style I love much more than Art Deco.<\/p>\n

\"\"
These are all by Gustav Klimt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\" \"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

We stored our luggage with Kirsten and David\u2019s very accommodating hotel and then ubered to the gallery. It would have taken 45 minutes to walk and it was raining. We bought tickets just to the permanent collections in the upper floors but that was enough for us. I enjoyed everything up to early\/mid twentieth century. Yes, I am a philistine. Anything from the 1920s onwards leaves me cold. I was surprised how much I enjoyed all of Klimt\u2019s work, and also to see the famous propaganda portrait of Napoleon. Apparently it\u2019s one of four versions. Also, the noble stallion he\u2019s pictured on was actually a mule. Fake news indeed. We actually saw a mural of this picture in Fontainebleau. I guess he is still a hero to many in France.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

David was very keen to have a Viennese coffee in Vienna, and a sacher torte. I\u2019ve had a coffee that was called Viennese before, in Japan, which was like a flat white but small and with cream. Delicious. That is apparently not a thing over here unfortunately. What David wanted was coffee with whipped cream, and that\u2019s what he got at The Golden Egg. I had one and didn\u2019t enjoy it but the bite of sacher torte I had was fabulous. The magical ingredient is apricot jam. The Sun had come out by the time we\u2019d had a fight with the waiter about whether we were going to tip or not (we didn\u2019t), and having plenty of time on our hands, we walked back to the hotel.<\/p>\n

We passed a number of young people walking into a building and were able to work out it was a group of university students starting the new year after the long summer holidays.<\/p>\n

We got a Bolt van to the airport, after the Uber XL version kept giving us a Tesla model Y or a Prius, laughable with the amount of luggage we had. Still much cheaper than a taxi van.<\/p>\n

We got to the airport in plenty of time, dropped off our luggage, got through security uneventfully and had lunch in the Vienna lounge, the highest rated lounge in Europe this year according to the posters, which seemed generous to me. We were all nervous about delays with passport checks, so went through that area early rather than take a risk. More than one person was having loud exchanges with the police officer in the booths and having excited conversations with third parties on their phones. However, luckily we all got through without any holdups.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Weirdly, it seems Austrians have a chip on their shoulder about being mistaken for Australians<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Priority boarding with Ryanair is a joke. Yes, we got to the front of the queue, but that only got us onto the cramped hot bus earlier. When we reached the plane, it was only just starting to disembark the arriving passengers. While we were waiting, the next bus arrived and those passengers ended up boarding ahead of us. I was in 1A which I thought would be a good spot, but not only did it mean I had to put all my carry on into the overhead compartments, my seat was also wet and I got rained on while the rest of the passengers were boarding.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Precarious and wet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Manchester airport was busy but passport control was a doddle with E gates. There was chaos earlier in the week at Heathrow with some air traffic control glitch so we were happy to get off so lightly. While we waited for the luggage Simon went through to get the hire car. We discovered that getting out of the airport is where the trouble really begins. You have to take a heaving shuttle full of people desperately clutching their luggage, which stops at every terminal on the way to the car rental village, trying to cram on more people at each stop but inevitably leaving baffled and frustrated looking travellers behind because they won\u2019t fit. There were also big queues of traffic trying to get into the airport. Intimidating and something to be wary of come departure day.<\/p>\n

We managed to fit all our luggage into the big Volvo Simon had hired and drove into Liverpool which took around 75 minutes. David was on navigation assistance, I was glad to be in the back as the drive was stressful, Simon having to remember to drive on the left on top of everything else. Luckily he excels in this sort of situation.
\nWe\u2019re staying at the Hilton which is way less glamorous than I was expecting. In fact it\u2019s positively tired looking inside. The parking is limited to around ten spots out side reception, which cost \u00a330 a day if you can find one.<\/p>\n

Went to a late dinner at one of the many restaurants at the nearby renovated docklands which was more than adequate, then to bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post also got wiped. I promise I\u2019ll go back through and add some piccies, although Gavin says most of my registered subscribers are probably spam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Ukf-3tx","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13362,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/16\/sunday-13-september-vienna-to-liverpool\/","url_meta":{"origin":13363,"position":0},"title":"Sunday 13 September Vienna part 2","author":"Interloper11","date":"September 16, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"This post got wiped when Gavin did my migration but in a rare demonstration of forethought, I made a copy, so here it is again. A relatively gentle start to the morning that allowed us to get our washing done before heading out to watch the horses. We\u2019d run out\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_7365-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3596,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2019\/11\/07\/famous\/","url_meta":{"origin":13363,"position":1},"title":"Famous","author":"Interloper11","date":"November 7, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I am a bit of a cultural philistine (is there any other kind?) as anyone who knows me could attest. However, I may not know much about art, but I know what I like. 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My new web host Gavin has been very busy on my behalf (I almost called him Nigel on an email just before; it\u2019s a similar sort of name, isn\u2019t it? Gavin has a Nigel vibe in my book.)\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4878,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/06\/02\/so-you-think-youre-a-big-girl\/","url_meta":{"origin":13363,"position":3},"title":"So you think you\u2019re a big girl?","author":"Interloper11","date":"June 2, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"or - a noob\u2019s adventures on Facebook. I joined Facebook about five years after everyone else, initially to be able to spy on my daughters before they abandoned it in favour of Instagram and Snapchat. For the first year or so I posted intermittently, but then we all started getting\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/6C329797-90AE-44D8-9845-662BCD0555A6-1024x583.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/6C329797-90AE-44D8-9845-662BCD0555A6-1024x583.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/6C329797-90AE-44D8-9845-662BCD0555A6-1024x583.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5834,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/11\/30\/day-2-ophir-to-oturehua\/","url_meta":{"origin":13363,"position":4},"title":"Day 2 – Ophir to Oturehua","author":"Interloper11","date":"November 30, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"A cold day. We set off late, around 11 am, in an attempt to miss the rain - but it still lingered for another hour before it finally petered out. The sun never really came out, though, and it stayed chilly. We did 29 kms \u00a0today, with two tunnels and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/E775273C-2B7A-484A-9E2F-38616D0931B7-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6914,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/25\/world-famous\/","url_meta":{"origin":13363,"position":5},"title":"World famous","author":"Interloper11","date":"September 25, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been a year since I virtually attended that conference on strokes. As I signed up again last week for this years edition, I had a look through the promotional video and found the section on where around the world last years delegates came from. Here\u2019s a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/2CA9F391-FAA5-4483-9759-57287F6864AD-1024x573.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/2CA9F391-FAA5-4483-9759-57287F6864AD-1024x573.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/2CA9F391-FAA5-4483-9759-57287F6864AD-1024x573.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}