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).

Memorial Day Weekend in Vienna

We packed on Thursday night and left Friday morning at 8:30 heading to Vienna.  When we crossed from Germany into Austria our GPS took us off the autobahn and through some scenic side roads.  We trusted her for a little while assuming that there must be a stau on the autobahn or something.  Then we realized that our GPS assumed we didn’t have the ‘10 day Austrian Autobahn decal’ which has to be purchased and stuck to your front window in order to be able to drive on the Autobahn there.  Well, we did have it and there was no way to TELL our GPS so instead we chose to ignore her and watched as arrival time diminished by leaps and bounds at each exit that we ignored instruction.  We had a similar experience last year when we drove into Austria and our GPS took us over a small mountain to get to our hotel in Salzburg instead of right along the autobahn.  Luckily we figured it out before we got any further. 

We really enjoyed the drive.  Having not been in the same vehicle for the last 6 weeks, Chris and I enjoyed the 6.5 hours to talk, make LONG to-do lists, discuss birthday presents for Ryan and Katie, read our new book –  ‘5 Spiritual Solutions for Everyday Parenting Challenges’ and secretly talk about switching the kids rooms around.  Boy I like traveling with that man.

With about 40 minutes left on the drive, we decided we’d better pick up the VIENNA Rick Steves book and figure out what the heck we were going to do in Vienna for the weekend.  We had briefly read a bit back when we made our hotel reservations 4 months ago but with such a crazy last couple weeks we simply didn’t prioritize it.  We drove into the city and parked right outside of our apartment.  It was really a great find.  A three bedroom apartment on the third floor – sleeping 8 with a living room and ‘American styled’ kitchen (used to describe anything bigger than a closet).  It  was PERFECT.   We picked rooms, unpacked and got ready to venture into the city.

We bought our 3 day city transportation passes at the corner store and took the subway to St. Stephan’s Cathedral, popping out so close to the Cathedral that we could hardly get a good look at it.    Little did we know that Vienna was having a music festival that weekend.  A large band played on a stage right beside the Cathedral and tons of people wandered through the market style shops enjoying the perfect blue-skied weather.

Immediately we were approached by a man wearing a fancy red jacket trying to sell us tickets to an orchestra, opera and ballet performance for that night.  He offered discounted tickets and 4 kids free and we were an easy sell.  We had wanted to do an opera in Vienna but didn’t know how we could do it.  This ‘casual dress – kid friendly’ performance sounded just perfect.  We bought tickets for 8:15 and spent the next two hours wandering around the circumference of the cathedral checking out shops filled with jewelry, leather and trinkets (of course Katie wished we would have spent longer and started dreaming up a vacation where all we did was shop) Finally we settled down at a table with bratwurst and spicy mustard and fried potato chunks with yummy white sauce.  An Australian couple came over to meet us impressed by the fact that our six children were eating culturally unique food.  Matthew especially, loves bratwurst… not surprising since he’s lived longer in Europe than in the States.

 

The St. Stephens Cathedral was unlike anything we’d ever seen. The tile on the steep roof was different but it was inside that was the most unique.   The stripes of solid colored stain glass windows gave the church a tie dye effect. 

 

   Pedestrian streets with lots of great shopping…

 

At 8:00 we walked over to our Royal Vienna Orchestra “Mozart and Strauss” Concert.  The concert was in a ballroom which was perfect since we were able to take Matthew or Luke and stand up in the back or side to look out the windows as they lost interest.

The orchestra started with a well known Mozart piece and both of the little boys looked at Dad after they instantly recognized it and said, “It’s Little Einstein!!”  The whole concert was fun, lively familiar pieces, – mostly Mozart.  Opera singers came in to sing to a few of the pieces.  It was really fun to watch them.  Luke and Matthew immediately covered their ears and said “Ewwww.”  It was pretty funny.  But Megan and the girls were quite impressed right from the start.  A Ballerina couple with gorgeous costumes danced during several of the pieces as well.  It really was a perfect concert for all of us.  Kind of like a ‘Best of’ Vienna Orchestra, Opera and Ballet.  It was the perfect way to start our Vienna weekend and one of the big highlights of the trip.

At 11:00 we wandered back through town, hoped on the subway and made our way back to the apartment.