Coming up with a catchy and clever title for each blog post is never going to happen and is a huge deterrent for me actually posting anything. So I am just going to use the date as the title (yes, I know it also says the date right under the title!) and call it good.
Last night was our second night in Vienna and the majority of us had an extremely difficult time falling asleep and / or slept terribly, so we started off feeling sleepy and out of sorts. However, we had our first experience with the U-Bahn, which the girls loved. They fancy themselves subway experts after all of our riding of the Metro in Washington, DC earlier this winter and they liked riding this subway as well.
We took the U-Bahn to Schloss Schonbrunn, the Schonbrunn Palace. It was the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers and was wonderful to see! Our pictures are almost exclusively from outside the palace since photography is not permitted once you get beyond the lobby.
The floor in the lobby looked like tile, but was actually made of wood, which was interesting. There were tons of stunning, intricate, glossy, detailed wooden floors in the palace itself, but this much more rustic look in the lobby was really neat, too. After our audio tour of the palace, we explored the grounds and gardens as well. I am sure they are gorgeous during other seasons, but things were fairly brown and barren currently. We did have some fun out there, despite the windy and rainy weather!
That building is a side view of the State Opera House and it is stunning!
Last night was our second night in Vienna and the majority of us had an extremely difficult time falling asleep and / or slept terribly, so we started off feeling sleepy and out of sorts. However, we had our first experience with the U-Bahn, which the girls loved. They fancy themselves subway experts after all of our riding of the Metro in Washington, DC earlier this winter and they liked riding this subway as well.
We took the U-Bahn to Schloss Schonbrunn, the Schonbrunn Palace. It was the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers and was wonderful to see! Our pictures are almost exclusively from outside the palace since photography is not permitted once you get beyond the lobby.
In the lobby, there were two hollow, bronze statues that were actually used as furnaces in the dining room of the former hunting lodge. One is of Hercules fighting the Nemean Lion and the other is of him fighting the dragon. Through the mouths of the creatures, hot air was blown to warm the room.
Later in the day we took another U-Bahn ride to the House of Music, a museum of sound and music. We had heard that it was very interactive and a fun place for kids, which it definitely was. We would've preferred to spend some more time just wandering around the Ringstrasse, a gorgeous large boulevard that encloses the historic Inner Stadt area of the city....but we had already spent a fair amount of today (and yesterday!) roaming around outside in the cold wet weather. So we opted for an inside activity that turned out to be lots of fun.
Lining the stairs up to the exhibit halls are these great "piano keys" on the steps. They made music when you stepped on them. Of course the girls loved playing around on them and making music as they walked and jumped and ran!
These are hung though the stairwell like a sculpture- they are massive copper organ pipes from St. Stephen's Cathedral.
These are a few pictures I snapped on the Ringstrasse as we headed out of the museum.
That building is a side view of the State Opera House and it is stunning!
Although we are staying right in the city, we found ourselves at "The Mall" several times during our stay here in Vienna, which is fairly comical. But it housed the nearest grocery store as well as the nearest U-Bahn stop so we were there often!
Lastly, here is a picture I wanted to include from yesterday at Stephensplatz.
I know that we barely scratched the surface of Vienna, but we were really viewing this as partially a sightseeing experience and partially a time to decompress and regroup before heading on to Bratislava tomorrow! Thankfully, we will be living so close to here and can easily come back to do more exploring if we want. As for now, we are extremely excited to head to our new city tomorrow! We are all eager to start to learn more about Bratislava and Slovakia in general and try to figure out what our lives will be like there for the next several months. Our van arrives in the morning to take us to our apartment!
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