Vienna - Day Three

Well, guess what!  The weather was even worse on Day 3 in Vienna.  But we headed to Schonbrunn Palace.  It is about a 10 minute metro ride outside of the city.  This palace is said to rival Versailles in it's grandeur and gardens.  It's beautiful.

 

Matt and I again relinquished our audio guides to the little tourists with us, and listened in when we could.  We were able to spend quite a bit of timing roaming through the 40 rooms open to the public.

There was an Easter Market out front.  I was able to only convince Grace to pose with the eggs.  We purchased a few Easter eggs and some lunch, and Matt found a bench under some trees that helped protect us from the wind and cold.

 

We would have liked to have spent the afternoon, or at least an hour or so touring the gardens, but it was just too miserable to be outside.  

 

In the afternoon we did a little more sightseeing around Vienna....

The thermometer was at about 7C, which is about 44F.  Plus wind and rain.  Not fun sightseeing weather.

So, at the end of the day we decided to head to Grinzing.  Grinzing is part of a childhood memory for me, mainly because my Dad loves to sing a song about Grinzing that he must have learned when we visited when I was young.   Grinzing is one of the little villages surrounding Vienna that has Heurigen, wine garden restaurants.  Much like a beer garden, but with wine.

It's a cute area, and I'm sure a lot of fun in the late spring, summer and fall.  But as soon as we got off the tram, it started pouring buckets.  We dove into a Walgreens type store to buy gloves because our hands were freezing.  The only gloves Matt could find were dish washing gloves.  He was not too proud to stroll down the street with them!  We wandered around a bit to see if we could jostle any memories from the last time I was there, but nothing seemed familiar.  So we just picked a place.

These two opted for hot chocolate!

 

More Easter decorations.  They were everywhere, and I now have a small collection of eggs that I hope to do something similar with....

Of course, after dinner the rain let up......such is life........  the next morning, we were off to Hallstatt!

Here is an album of all of my pictures from Vienna .

Stay tuned for more adventures!

Vienna - Day Two

On our second day in Vienna, we had a little delay getting going so Matt could run to the mall down the street to buy a few things to beat the elements.

So thankful for the slingbox to entertain the girls!  Lifesaver! (Also a tiny view of our apartment in Vienna.)

When we finally got started, it was actually sunny out, but very windy and brisk.  We walked past some statues memorializing the War.

We learned that Austria is neutral now, and not part of NATO.  Neither of us (or the girls) knew this, or if we did, we forgot it.  Now we know.

We headed over to St. Stephen's Cathedral

After a quick peek inside (it was closing), we headed towards The Graben.

Look how cloudy it is.....  The Graben means ditch.  Originally a roman military camp.  This was a three lane road until the 1970s, when it was turned into one of the first pedestrian only zones in Europe.

We then headed to the Hofburg Palace.

The girls basically commandeered the audio guides, and in order for them to remain sane, Matt and I wandered around reading our guide book and the few placards on the walls.  Grace came out of it fascinated with Sisi, Empress Elizabeth.

They were on the Princess marketing bandwagon, in Vienna....they even had Sisi Barbie dolls to buy!  We did NOT come home with one!!

As we were leaving the Palace, the bottom fell out of the sky.  It was raining cats and dogs, absurdly windy and COLD.  As you can imagine, every indoor space was packed with people escaping the rain.  We trudged along for a bit, and finally collapsed into a covered outdoor cafe with heaters.  We tried to ride out the storm with cake, ice cream, coffee and hot chocolate....  which, in Germany we've always noticed everyone stops for huge ice cream sundaes and cake in the afternoon anyway....I guess Austria, too!  So it was fitting.  When it finally let up a little, we decided to head over to the Prater.  The Prater is a sprawling amusement park with a famous 220 foot tall ferris wheel.

 We figured by the time we got over there, the weather might be better, and if not, we'd at least see something different before calling it a day.  We really lucked out.  The weather did start to clear and it was something fun for the girls to do.  So we headed up into the ferris wheel.

Audrey wasn't sure about it at first.....

But once we got going, she was fine.....

 

Some graffiti for our Iowa followers....

The weather was much better was we were back on the ground, so we walked around the park, and told the girls they could pick one ride to do.  The both picked the pony carousal.  With real pony's!

I really wish I had gotten video of this.  Don't let Grace's smile above fool you.  Once they got moving, she maintained a straight faced look of complete apprehension the whole time.  With good reason, too.  The pony's did not walk slowly.  They were in a full trot.  Which was quite unexpected.  But Audrey was over the moon, grinning from ear to ear.  Matt and I were so excited for her.  Maybe too excited.  One time she passed us, I started clapping, and it must have scared her horse.  It started bucking.  We were so terrified she was going to fall off.  But thank God, she was really tied into that seat tightly, she barely moved.  But her joy quickly turned into tears and fear.  Poor thing.  They didn't stop the ride, and she held on and calmed down by the time they were done....she was a little shaken up, but I think she'd do it again.

So after that fun, we headed to dinner at the Beergarden inside the park, and had dinner and some seriously big beers to unwind!

And on our way out......  the ferris wheel lit up, a clear sunsetting sky ....

Stay tuned for Day 3....

Vienna, Austria - First afternoon/evening

Vienna is roughly an 11 hour drive from Brussels.  Without stops.  With two girls, that was probably too much to bite off, so we broke the drive up, and stopped over in a tiny town on the Germany/Austria border for the night.  I don't have any pictures from the town.  It wasn't anything terribly special, but I wish I had gotten a picture of the wooden bridge we drove through to get there.  It was special.

Luckily you can find almost anything on the internet!

This picture doesn't really do it a great deal of justice. But for me, it was one of those 'pinch me' moments....  'Look at me driving on this really old, one lane, wooden bridge in Germany!'

We got up the next morning and finished the drive to Vienna.  We got to our apartment right about 1pm.  After settling in, eating a quick lunch we picked up on our way into town, we headed out on our first sight seeing adventure.

This is when I started to realize that maybe using weather.com and the 10 day forecast was a big mistake while packing.  It was CHILLY, windy, and drizzly rain.  Praise the Lord for H&M being right down the street from our apartment!

Walking past the Museum Quartier:

The Danube Canal:

The Vienna Opera House (there must have been some fleeting blue sky and sunshine):

Sweet sisters posing in front of the fountain below the Palmenhaus Restaurant:

I can't believe I didn't get a picture of this greenhouse (so I borrowed one from the internet - I wish we had that type of weather!!!):

This is where we ate dinner the first night - the Palmenhaus.  It was fabulous, and a great way to end our first night in Vienna.

Stay tuned for more adventures in Vienna....