Schonbronn Palace, Maze, Zoo, and some Schnitzel

Today was a good day.  

The plan was to spend it at the Schonbronn palace complex.  We were a little worried because we have the ViennaPass, which got us in to the palace, but didn't give us an assigned ticket time.  So we got up and out early so that we didn't have to wait for hours.  

The main palace.  Couldn't fit the wings in the frame.

Thankfully, the timing worked out perfectly so that we could spend a little time in the gardens beforehand, but didn't have an interminable wait for the palace itself.

In the private garden.

In the Orangerie

Beautiful child in a bush,

It's hard to mean mug in a Vienna tourist hat, but I think he managed to pull it off.

They don't let you take any pictures inside the palace itself, which is a real bummer.  But it was really super beautiful.  We saw a number of the rooms used by various royalty for various things.  We walked for about an hour and saw maybe 1/3 of the palace?  It was very impressive.

After that, we went to see more of the grounds.  Jax was especially excited about doing the labyrinth.  It looked easy, but was actually a challenge.  Pete and Jax did make it to the center viewing station before Lea and I did though.  

At the start of the maze

Shoot.  They beat us.

There were two other not-mazey labyrinths that we did after that.  Not quite as fun, but still pretty cool.

Mirror trickery in one of the mazes.

We then head to the zoo, which is the oldest zoo in the world, founded some time in the 1750s.  It was surprisingly large and very cool

Rhino

Pelican.

Lea (front right) and some buffalo

The original ROUS - the capybara

A snoring tapir.  Adorable.

Lions

Panda butt!

By this point we were all very very tired, having walked quite far, even though we were on the palace grounds the whole time.  However, I was still hoping to see the Gloriette, which was a "little" building set on a high hill that afforded a lovely view of the palace and much of Vienna.  So we hopped on a little tram thing that took us up (and thankfully back down).

Children Humoring Me: A Series

View of the palace from the Gloriette

The little building where one of the Hapsburg queens like to breakfast. 
Just like our breakfast nook at home.

By this point Jax's watch was indicating that he had walked 5.5 miles, and we were all ready for a break.  So back to the apartment for a little rest before heading to Figlmuller for dinner.  A touristy place for sure, but they advertised having served schnitzel since 1905.  Thankfully I had made a reservation, since when we arrived there was a line down the street.  

Schnitzel.  It was quite good.  And not small.

Jax went with steak.  He was happy with his choice.

I didn't get pictures of dessert, but the apple strudel and chocolate cake had for dessert by the children was excellent.  Then back again to get ready for our last day in Vienna.  Tomorrow is more palaces and an amusement park!  

Vienna, Part One

We've made it an settled in for step one of our trip - Vienna!

We flew out Thursday night, leaving late.  Honestly, we were all pretty nervous by the time we left.  We were looking at a lot of traveling, plus some of us (me) don't really care for flying.

He was pretty excited about the in-flight entertainment system. 
He was a lot less happy by the time we landed and he hadn't slept, but he really rallied.

But the flight was very uneventful.  We landed in London a little early and, despite our apprehension, made it from one terminal in Heathrow to another with time to spare.  Our second flight was delayed on the ground, but not for too long and it gave us a little chance to nap, as the kids and I barely slept on the first ride.

We arrived in Vienna, got our luggage no problem, took two trains and a short walk and arrived at our first Airbnb, which is just lovely.

The view from our window

Pete and my room

Kid's room, with a collapsed Lea for scale.

We unpacked, grabbed some Vietnamese food from a place around the corner, came home and crashed hard.

We didn't plan too much for our first day in the city, because we were pretty sure that we'd still be suffering from jet lag.  And we were right.  All of us were up some in the middle of the night, which resulted in the children sleeping until very late the next morning.  So we took our time before heading out to the Naschmarket.

Unfortunately, not his size

I don't know enough German to ask what one does with unicorn syrup.  Is it made from unicorns?  Does it go on unicorns?  I will never know.

We poked around some little shops, had some lunch, and generally remarked on the Quincy-market-ness of the place.  I am not sure we'll have the opportunity to go back, but maybe we'll have the chance to grab lunch supplies there for our train trip to Prague, because it was a really cool place.

I am trying not to overly museum the children, but we thought, with the rain coming in, a manageable modern art museum might be an ok way to spend some time, so we went to the Leopold Museum in Museum Quarter.  It's a very impressive space.

Front of Museum Quarter

Children Humoring Me: A series

Artists felt Some Sort Of Way about the Anchluss

The reform dress.  You know, when women finally decided they wanted to breathe and ditched the corset.

It was small, and even given that the kids were pretty done pretty quickly.  We sat in the courtyard for a bit until we were threatened with real rain.  We then took a quick walk through the park across the street and it started to really rain, which we took as a sign to head home.

The purple bench things were very cool, but also quite slidy.

Art museum I did not make the children go to

We tried to go to dinner at a place just down the street recommended by our Airbnb host, and we discovered that it was closed.  At 6pm on Saturday.  Which we quickly noticed as a theme.  Vienna is NOT open for business all the time.  More on that later.  Anyway, we found a little Ukrainian place close by, ate some perogies, and head home.

This morning we got up and had some breakfast, and then made our way over to St. Stephen's Cathedral. It's a very impressive building.

St. Stephen's

 The south tower is accessible by stairs and we had talked about going up.  However, when we got there and I saw how narrow the stairs were alllllll the way up, I decided to pass (I learned my lesson at St. Peter's Basilica 18 years ago).  The kids and Pete were still game for going, though, so up they went.

Roof of the church

View of Vienna

Children in the gift shop at the top

They were all the way at those tiny top windows

Back down on the ground we realized that it would be better to go back to the church in the afternoon when we could actually get further in (there was Mass this morning) so we decided to do a quick bus tour to get the lay of the land of the city.  

Honestly, it wasn't great, but it was nice to take a little break and see where things were in relation to one another.

Hello Museum Quarter!

We then went to grab some lunch at a super cute Viennese place I found right by St. Stephens...only to discover that it was closed until tomorrow for vacation.  Drat.  So we ended up eating entirely adequate Italian directly across the street.  

We then went back into the church to actually see it.  We still couldn't get into the church quite as much as I hoped, but could definitely see more of the art and architecture.

We thought it would be cool to see the Hapsburg Imperial Crypt, and it was right nearby, so we made our way over for that.  These people did not cheap out when it came to dying.

Thanks for nothing, Franz Joseph #WWI #stillresentful

So here's where we took a little insane interlude.  We planned on having dinner at home tonight, but didn't realize in time yesterday that every grocery store in the city of Vienna is closed today (barely exaggerating here).  Pete found one that was open at the main train station, about a 15 minute subway ride away.  So we decided to head over there, since it's where we have to pick up our train to Prague anyway, grab some food for dinner tonight and breakfast and lunch tomorrow, then head back to Hotel Sacher for some torte (which Pete was very much looking forward to).

We get there and the grocery store is closed.  But wait!  Apparently the full grocery store is closed, but there's a "pronto" version that is open one floor up.  Fine, we don't need that much.  We head upstairs and into a grocery store the size of a shoebox with, conservatively, half of Vienna.  We go to buy things when we realize that the store is divided in two - one literally cannot purchase vegetables in the same half of the store that one purchases bread.  So we go to both halves of the store, get everything we need, and head back to city center.  Vienna, you are lovely, but this is nonsense.

We get off the subway, walk past the opera house and into Hotel Sacher.  We are very hot and tired.

Opera House

He was very tired, but thankfully this was a highly posed shot.

Post cake happiness

However, everyone was picked up by cake and cold water.  Pete was very happy to cross this one off his bucket list.

We returned to the apartment, chilled out a bit, then ate the dinner we struggled so hard to get (spaetzle and bratwurst, to be on theme).  It was a lot of walking today and everyone is quite tired.  But we're excited for tomorrow, which brings the Schonbraunn Palace and some authentic Viennese food.  Apparently pictures aren't allowed, but I'm sure we'll have some great stories.