When in Vienna...

Author: Brandon (Dad)

Well, our time in Vienna has come to an end. After a frantic search for seats, we’re all resting comfortably on board our two and a half hour train ride to Budapest, Hungary. This allows me the opportunity to report on our final two days in Austria.

On Tuesday we found our way to the subway and headed out to Schönbrunn Palace, the summer home of the Habsburgs. It’s the kind of summer home we’ll probably get in the future.

We explored acres upon acres of the garden, hiking up to Gloriette, which afforded us a sweeping view of the palace and the city.

Nice, but their landscaping bill must be enormous.

A nice lunch in the garden café was enjoyed after our hike. We’ve found that cafes or restaurants attached to tourist destinations, national parks, etc., are far better here than in the U.S. Plus, everywhere offers beer which can’t be a bad thing.

In the afternoon we took the “Grand Tour” of the palace and, along with the audio guide, it was fantastic. Very informative and engaging enough for the kids to follow along.

While I knew bits and pieces about the Habsburg dynasty, spending time here has helped me connect the dots. I love history, especially English and European history, and Vienna is absolutely full of it.

When we got back to the inner city, we wandered around, had a drink, dinner and turned in before too late. Tiffany and I did sneak out for a drink after locking the kids up in our apartment… after this much travel, it was probably good for all of us.

Speaking of our apartment, our place in Vienna, just off the canal, in the inner city, was very good. Both spacious and comfortable, we put it near the top of a list featuring many great spots. In fact, we haven’t really had a bad place. The guy arranging accommodations is really talented. Pretty good looking too, I hear.

Despite lots of history and a healthy dose of Habsburgs, on our last full day we headed to the Hofburg Palace. What’s that old saying, “when in Vienna…?”. In addition to its royal history, the palace is also the functioning seat of the Austrian government. We did a combo tour where we got to see the treasury as well as an amazing art museum.

This is, quite literally, as excited as two kids can be to view relics from the Habsburg dynasty.

A few weeks back, we saw the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London, but this one was a far better tour. A lot more to look at, more informative, and they let you go at your own pace. Plus it had historical artifacts beyond simply the jewels and crowns. I thought it was great.

After we had lunch at the Naschmarkt, a kind of central market with lots of restaurants and stalls, we headed to the Kunsthistoriches Museum of Vienna, an absolutely incredible art museum. Again, this was up there with any art museum I’ve ever seen. Not only were the paintings and sculptures impressive, the building that housed them was equally breathtaking. They also had an amazing collection of ancient Roman, Greek, and Egyptian artifacts, which was a nice way to break up the paintings.

Vienna has a pretty decent craft beer scene, so we walked over to a brewery, had a beer, then jumped on the subway out to Prater, the “oldest amusement park in Europe”. When our country’s forefathers were typing up the Declaration of Independence, the Austrians were founding an amusement park. Some of the rides might have been originals.

I don't know.  We just though this was kind of funny.

Prater was more akin to an extremely large county fair than to Disneyland or a typical American amusement park. Additionally, all the rides seemed to be independent, so you couldn’t really buy a pass. We did the bumper cars, then Livi and Mom went on an incredibly tall swing ride. It was 117 meters tall and had the passengers swinging around in a circle at 60 km/h at a height of 95 meters. They said the view was incredible. I had to take their word for that.

Had an interesting dinner at a place called Schweizerhaus, a very popular spot that specializes in enormous pork knuckles and lots and lots of beer. The house beer is the Czech Budweiser which we found much more palatable than its American step cousin.

Budweiser all around!

The kids took a not so fun trip to the fun house before we dodged the rain drops and walked the mile or so back to our place.

On the walk home.

Another pretty full day, but that’s the way we like them.

I’m trying to put together the last week of the trip right now and we’ve run in to some travel challenges. Should be exciting to see which direction we’ll go. A week to kill in Europe… that’s a pretty nice problem to have.

Until next time….