Weekend in Vienna: The Schonbrunn Palace

Because of our late night at the Opera we slept in on Saturday morning and took our time getting ready.  Nice to have a flexible schedule.  Once we were ready we left the apartment and crossed the street to a great neighborhood park.  The kids played and Chris and I sat on a bench in the shade, scanned the Rick Steves book and made a plan for the weekend.  A half hour later we were on the subway headed for the Schonbrunn Palace.  We were interested in the water color paintings AND the magnum bars (we’re addicted!) outside the Palace gates but decided that we’d look at them again on our way out.  Little did we know that we would spent so long in the Palace grounds that both booths would be closed on our way out.

Right inside the gate…

We bought the family ticket that included:

• a tour of 40 of the lavishly decorated palace rooms,
• freedom to explore the many palace gardens,
• entry into the several small garden mazes and a children’s playground,
• a hike up to the monument up on the hill (below),
• AND a cooking show where we watched how they made apple strudel and then sampled it.

Megan and Emily facing the palace and in front of the palace gardens and monument…

   

One of the Palace side gardens…

The other side garden with a gorgeous red rose tunnel.  It smelled SOOO fantastic.

 

After the side gardens we toured the inside and then went in for the cooking show.  The kitchen was down in the basement of the palace.  The cook was entertaining and amazing.  He kept saying, “Just do it like this.  It’s easy.” but it didn’t look easy.  It tasted good but I thought it would have been really great with some vanilla ice cream.  Chris and Ryan ended up eating all of the little kids pieces  They didn’t love it.

 

Back in the gardens the kids had fun playing around with the sprinklers…

We made our way into the playground to play for a little while.  Megan and Katie loved all the funny mirrors.

   

Then we headed to the mazes.  I climbed up into a tower in the middle and had fun watching where the kids, who were all in partners, were running.  It was fun.  One of the entrances of the maze had these steps over a pond and would spray water at you as you walked across.  The kids loved running back and forth.

  

Once our kids all found the exit we headed up the big hill to the monument and then climbed it’s stairs for the best view of the palace and Vienna.

 

Such a great day.  Beautiful weather.  Beautiful scenery.  We headed back on the subway and then walked the couple blocks to our apartment.  We ate some food that we had packed with us and then put the little kids to bed and watched Mission Impossible 1 with the projector in the living room.  We wanted to watch all of them before we rewatched Mission Impossible 4 (that I got for Mother’s Day).