We decided to take our first out-of-town adventure and
celebrate a long Easter weekend in Vienna, Austria. We spent 4 nights at the Marriott
Vienna (
http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/vieat-vienna-marriott-hotel/) and packed in full days of adventures every day. We took
over 700 pictures (don't worry - they're not all in here, but this is a loooong blog post) and had a blast. Before the trip the only thing Don “knew”
about Vienna was that they were known for their sausages and fingers, but it
turns out there’s a lot more to the city ;-) ! Our take on Vienna: a beautiful city,
with tons to do, a rich history and really nice people. The only downside was
that it was very expensive… Prague may be spoiling us…
It was supposed to be about a 3.5 hour drive, but a few
accidents and construction stretched it out to 5 hours on the way there.
Surprisingly, the kids were great the whole ride, so it really wasn't a
problem.
We arrived around dinner time and with a recommendation from
the Concierge, were off to dinner at a Viennese restaurant called Huth:
http://www.zum-huth.at/, (pronounced “hoot” not “hut”) After some sausages and wiener schnitzel,
we walked around the city a bit.
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| St. Stephan's Cathedral in the background |
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| Dinner at Huth |
We ended the night with some ice cream... a little predictable for Cooleys, but so good!
Vienna is so beautiful with so much history; it was hard to
decide what to do, so we started out by walking through a beautiful park right next to our hotel and then hopping on the metro to get to Schönbrunn Palace. It’s funny because a few weeks ago I don’t think we would have even
considered hopping on public transportation in a foreign city, but now that we’ve
conquered the buses, trams, and metros in Prague, we’re much more comfortable and were able to figure it out pretty quickly (even in German).
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| Stadtpark near our hotel |
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| Weird statue? Sure, let's take a picture. |
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| Elevator down to the metro! |
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| Waiting for the metro |
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| Wait, a train is coming! |
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| Naturals |
At Schönbrunn we hopped on the Panorama Train and were
able to see several sites on a ride around the Palace grounds that lasted a
little under an hour. The kids loved riding the train and it was such a great
way to cover a lot of ground without tiring them out. The grounds were
BEAUTIFUL.
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| Holden's new best buddy: Mozart! |
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| Burke in front of the Palace |
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| Panorama Train! |
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| All aboard! |
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| The gardens |
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| A view of the palace from above |
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| Gloriette Hill |
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| Family photo in front of Gloriette Hill |
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| Burke said "take my picture with the ducks!" |
The train was super convenient because it also stopped at
the zoo, so we were able to hop off, walk around the zoo and then hop back on
to get back to the Palace. The Vienna Zoo is the oldest zoo in
the world and was really neat. Because it was constructed on the palace
grounds, there are palace buildings throughout the zoo and although it was a
bit small, there were lots of animals (lions, pandas, giraffes, penguins, hippos,
etc.) and it was really easy to navigate. Most importantly, there were plenty
of beer gardens throughout. Now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure there were
more beer gardens than exhibits… We’ll never be able to go to a zoo in the U.S.
again because we’ll be wandering around searching for beer and wiener schnitzel!
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This building was from somewhere and transported from
there to here and it was a big deal and... did someone say beer
garden? Excuse me... |
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Suspension bridge (Darcy & Ryan - reminded us of our
Pittsburgh zoo photo!!) |
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| Froggie for Gramma |
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| Not to be outdone... |
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| Sleeping bear in the background |
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| We thought a few minutes in a cage would do them some good... |
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| Beautiful cafe in the middle of the zoo |
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| Giraffes |
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| Why haven't we figured this out in the U.S. yet??? |
Similar to Prague, they have Easter Markets at various
places around Vienna including around the Palace. Lots of the same stuff as we
saw in Prague, just much more expensive.
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| Pretzel vendor. See below... we may have tried one... |
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| What says Easter like a giant chicken!?! |
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| Giant eggs with flowers |
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| Easter Markets |
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| Live music at the market |
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| Hand-painted Easter eggs |
Back at the hotel, it was time for a snack!
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| Biggest pretzel ever!! |
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| But not too big for the Cooleys! |
For dinner the Concierge suggested another restaurant and this one was really cool. It was called Pürstner (
http://www.puerstner.com/international/puerstner-english.html) and was very old
with old art and barrels everywhere. Some of the tables were even in barrels. Don
had ribs (I’m not sure there were enough…) and I had a pork dish with a
delicious and very salty sauce and an enormous dumpling. The kids shared an
order of fried Emmental (swiss) cheese. The waiters were dressed in what Don
decided was authentic Viennese garb, so he had to get a picture.
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| I hardly made a dent in that dumpling. I think it weighed 5 lbs! |
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| Fried cheese? Yes, please! |
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| Ribs, ribs and more ribs! |
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| 4 Cooleys in a barrel... |
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| Just the boys! |
Easter Sunday we woke up and the kids were excited to find
out that the Easter Bunny had found them in Vienna. (NOTE: Burke is in her
undies because she had an accident in the hotel bed. Yup. That was awesome.)
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Czech Easter Cake (chocolate covered
yellow cake). And, sorry to the housekeeping
staff... that stuff ended up everywhere!) |
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| Holden is so happy for Burke |
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| ... but even happier now that he's found his! |
We enjoyed brunch at the hotel and Burke enjoyed being
dressed like a princess.
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| Our little doll |
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| Holden says "wait a minute!" |
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| On our way to brunch |
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| Hot chocolate |
A few different families had suggested the Kinder
Museum so we went back towards the Palace and spent a few hours at the Children’s
Museum. Our favorite part by far was the dress up section. Recognize these
royals???
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| King Holden |
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| Queen Burkey |
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| Definitely my favorite picture of the whole trip! |
The museum itself was geared to slightly older kids, but they
did have horses and an Easter Bunny hunt. Burke and Holden loved searching for bunnies and
when they found theirs they won fabulous prizes (a pad of paper… ooooooohhh…. aaahhhhh….)!
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| Searching for Easter bunnies |
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| The girls taking a break to fan ourselves |
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| There's a bunny! |
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| His royal highness |
Right near the metro stop was a really nice park where they
made a new friend (Anna) from Vienna.
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| Faster, Anna! :) |
In the evening we walked to the Haus Der Musik (aka: House
of Music) and spent some time learning about the history of sound and the Viennese
music scene (Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss). Some of the exhibits were a little
too advanced, but some were totally age appropriate and the kids had a blast.
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| Listening to all the different sounds |
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| Creating our own music from our name (Cooley) |
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| Conducting the orchestra |
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The orchestra said "We can only take so much!"
when Holden was conducting :) |
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Supposedly this reacted to our movements, but
I'm pretty sure there was a hidden camera and
people were just laughing at us... |
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We bought a flute and maracas...
and regretted it about 30 seconds later... |
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On the way to dinner we met a very nice
Police woman. |
Dinner was an upscale Viennese restaurant (a little too
upscale for the Cooley bunch) and although the couples all around us commented
on how well behaved our little monsters were, we know they were just being
nice. Weibel's Wirthaus (
http://www.weibel.at/wirtshaus01.html). It was a beautiful building, but small (we ended up taking a time out in
the water closet because there was nowhere else to go!) and very quiet (except
for our loud kids). And it was EXPENSIVE… 3 meals ran us about $150. Yikes.
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You know it's fancy when they bring you little
pieces of bacon, which were promptly eaten
by Burke. They looked good, wonder
how they tasted... |
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| A little rest on the way back to the hotel |
For our final day we wanted to see a bit more of the city
and the kids had been asking to ride the horses since day 1, so we sucked it up
and went for a carriage ride. The views were amazing and the kids had a blast
(although they did not pay much attention to the views)…
After the carriage ride we took a walk around the city to
get a closer look at some of the sights.
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| Mural on the back of more Easter Markets |
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| Hand-painted eggs |
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| Bunnies! |
One of the highlights was St. Stephens Cathedral. We were told (although we didn't pay for the "official tour," so take it for what it's worth, that it took 300 years to build).
This coffee shop, called Café Central is famous for all
sorts of people hanging out there, like Freud, Vladimir Lennon, Leon Trotsky
and Peter Alderman (who changed his home address to the Café because he spent
so much time there).
We loved this!
We had a potty emergency and in Europe there is no such
thing as a free public bathroom. Our philosophy: if you’re going to have to pay
to use a water closet anyway, might as well hop into a pub!
Who knew you could get photo bombed and then be asked by
said photo bomber to pay for his photo bombing services? Only in Vienna…
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| Here we are... |
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| Spotted... |
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| Here he comes... |
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| He's in. |
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Stealing maracas from children is apparently
very big in Vienna |
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Poses for a picture and then puts out his hand for money.
Umm... thanks. Just what we wanted. |
Dinner was at a little restaurant that was tucked away and hard to find, but totally worth it. It was called Brezl Gwölb:
http://www.brezl.at/, and
was located in the original Vienna pretzel bakery from the 12
th
century. We reserved a table in the
basement and got to sit in the oven (not working anymore of course)! It was so cool
and also away from other patrons, so the kids could be as loud as they wanted
without disturbing anyone. There was a door in the basement with tunnels under
the city and according to our waitress, the tunnel goes all the way to St.
Stephen’s Cathedral. It was really, really cool. I had goulash (it came with an
egg), the kids had weiner schnitzel and Don had boiled beef, but the pretzels
were definitely the highlight.
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Our waitress, Flora, brought over
a set of colored pencils |
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| All of us in the oven |
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| Thumbs up for Grampa |
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| Goulash |
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| Boiled beef |
The service was awesome too! Our waitress, Flora, was so
sweet to the kids. They LOVED her.
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| The nicest waitress ever |
Back at the hotel we decided to go for one more swim before bed.
Our first official vacation in Europe is in the books and we're calling it a success. The whole trip there and back took 3/4 of a tank of gas... gotta love diesel. We are now safely back "home” in Prague and it's actually starting to feel a little bit like home. Hard to believe it's been a month already...
