Day 11: What A Difference A Gay Makes

Well I'm off again for two days, I should have been going to Salzburg for the day, but the producer I was going to go with has postponed, the imminent arrival of his wife and the fact that he hasn't done much of the local tourist attractions so far has probably influenced his rethink, well that and the tickets he has for a match there next week.

So instead I meet him and a few others in town for a rather unique guided tour, lead by said producer and aided by his trusty guide book. What you should know about Shane (the producer) is he is very funny, not always intentionally, but you can guarantee whatever he says it will be tinged with a bitter dryness and all delivered in his thick Irish accent. So we start at the cathedral in Stephanplatz, it is stunning inside and has been lit beautifully.

Moving along the tour we take in Mozarts house, the Fleischmarkt (meat market) and no it's not a club and other 'notable points of interest'. We sneak into the Institute of Science where a scientist who looks something like this has just walked out of and informed us of the buildings purpose:

A few chemical experiments later and we pop into another church right next door which contains one of the most stunning pulpits I've ever seen, not that I go into churches much, they always give me a strange burning sensation and the water in the fonts starts bubbling for some reason.

So the tour concludes and we take a late lunch, you can imagine my sheer delight on discovery of this little shop, which by coincidence also tickled Smithy with whom we hadn't yet met up. There are some 'accidental' pictures of me with the sign in the background, but they're on my chums camera so I'll have to wait till I can get a copy to show you.

Next up we head back down to the Fanzone to watch Italy v Romania (god it feels strange writing about football so much!) it's a pretty decent match and Romania are unlucky not to beat the Italians, a draw however is not a great result for my predictor placing though, I had this down as an Italy win. The Town Hall or Rathaus as it's known in Austrian has been beautifully lit and is a great backdrop for the football.

With a certain inevitability the drinking starts, we stay in the Fanzone for the 2nd match of the day Holland v France, it's an absolute belter of a match. I've got Holland to win 2-1 they absolutely storm in a 4 - 1 win, I still get 3 points though for predicting a win. After the matches they have a DJ to keep the crowd going, I'm well on my way and dancing is the order of the day, there is video evidence of this, whether I am brave enough to post it when I am given it is another thing!

So another night out, we head into a rammed bar down by the river, the music is pretty good and we stay there for the duration, Brenna and I are doing our best to 'dance-off' with each other, but it's pretty pokey (the bar). We head back to the hotel sometime after 3 and finish off one of the free bottles of wine from the first week and talk about life in general, god I'm drunk and I have to meet Stephan tomorrow, the crazy German I worked with at the World Cup 2 years ago. Bugger.