My recent trip to the Vs was exciting and fascinating.

Vienna

I’d never been to Austria before and probably wouldn’t ever have gone if I hadn’t written about this city in The Women Friends. But I left my qualms at home for four days and prepared to enjoy myself while conducting my research.

Four days weren’t nearly enough, but we managed to do quite a lot.

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We ate traditional foods. Well, we had to eat something, so why not? And we ate in the famous Café Central.

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We went walking in the mountains near Vienna, along with my nephew who lives there.

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We saw lots of paintings by Klimt, because that was one of the reasons for going there. The one that excited me the most was Death and Life, because it’s featured in The Women Friends.

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We saw the Jewish Museum and the Hundertwasser Museum, the Town Hall, Schönbrunn Palace with its fabulous gardens and palm house.

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We even saw Karl Marx Hof, which, as the sign says, is Vienna’s largest residential building of the inter-war period. Wikipedia says it’s the “longest single residential building in the world.” It’s in The Women Friends.

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And the Prater with its big wheel, which is also in The Women Friends.

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Venice

This was my third visit to this unique city, defined, above all, by the fact that all travel is water-based. We saw ambulance boats, funeral boats, delivery boats and of course passenger boats, which we used when we weren’t walking our feet off, because the mainland of Venice is all about shopping – window shopping, in our case – and anyway, we love walking.

We visited the cemetery island – Cimitero di San Michele – Burano and Murano, famous for glass production and also very beautiful.

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Even the trip to the airport was accomplished by boat. At the airport, a surprise awaited me: an upgrade to business class. What a wonderful ending to a wonderful holiday!

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About The Women Friends

The Women Friends is a series of novellas based on Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece of the same name and written by Emma Rose Millar and Miriam Drori.

The Women Friends: Selina will be published by Crooked Cat on 1st December and is available now for pre-order.

The Women Friends: Janika will be published by Crooked Cat in 2017.