Vienna--1 1/2 days

Jack and Eric on the metro...on our way to Schunbrunn Palace.
This is not the greatest picture; I had a hard time fitting the whole palace into one picture. This is the front entrance to the palce, but there are extensive gardens and grounds behind this building, that we explored.
They built this monument to honor Roman "contributors"; it is interesting to see the difference in architecture from other Viennese buildings and ruins. This is one of the large gardens on the grounds. This is the back side of the palace; behind this garden is a large fountain, and then standing behind that on a huge hill is another large building, where they used to dine and overlook the city.
This picture is taken from the fountain; yes, I'm actually climbing in the statues, and yes, that is my finger, and yes, that is Eric somewhere at the bottom taking video footage.
This is the "dining room" up at the top of the hill. You can't really see the hill from this picture, but I assure you, it was not an easy climb! Beautiful views, though! That's downtown Vienna behind us, past the palace.
Here you can see the fountain, and then in the distance, the dining room monument. The palace grounds continue behind the hill, as well as off to the left and right of this picture. There were so many things to cover and we didn't make it to everything...and we didn't even go inside the Palace!
My dad got a little tired and fell asleep here. A professional photographer walked by and was so amused that he took a couple shots of him like this!
Our favorite ice cream shop...notice the towers of cones stacked up...they had so many flavors, and it was delicious! Mmm. (Yes, my finger makes an appearance once again)
Happy travellers.

We stayed at an adorable bed and breakfast a little bit outside of downtown Vienna . . . also very nice accommodations. The first morning we visited the amazing Hapsburg summer home (Schunbrunn Palace), which was just beautiful. I wish we had had time to take the inside tour, but the line was way too long. So we just walked around the grounds--which they say are four times the length of the palace! I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have this as your backyard!

That afternoon we took a tour of the Vienna Opera house, where (among many other important events) Eric’s dad once danced at the annual New Years’ Ball. After that we sat in a Starbucks to cool down (the bathrooms had black lighting!!)—after carrying Jack in the Baby Bjorn all morning at the palace and then all over the Opera house, my legs were really hurting. Then we went to St. Stephen’s Cathedral, but it was very dark inside and we couldn’t see much (it was about to close). The organist was practicing, though, so that was neat to hear. St. Stephen’s is really stunning from the outside…one of my favorites in Europe. And, once again, we enjoyed delicious gelato—I think our best yet! (see the picture)

We decided that we would take a little bit longer route to Venice by driving through Salzburg, Austria, so we could see the Alps. It was SO worth it! Eric and I would like to come back to Austria someday and do Vienna and Salzburg all over again…I’ve been to both places twice now and I still want to go back! Eric’s dad lived in Vienna for awhile and so there is a lot that we would like to see there that we didn’t have time for on this trip. Maybe next year.