Europe 2012: Day 11 - Vienna

After the horrible day we had on Saturday, I was a little nervous about how Mother's Day in Vienna would go. We started the day with breakfast at Cafe Aida. We had pastries and American coffee. Anya definitely enjoyed having pastries for breakfast every day while we were in Europe.

Next, we headed to Schonbrunn Palace. It is about 30 minutes outside the city center and is considered the summer home of the Hapsburgs. Wouldn't you like to have a summer home like this?

We bought a pass that got us a tour of the Imperial Apartments. Luckily, Ani slept through most of this so we could actually enjoy the audioguides that came with it. The apartments were absolutely beautiful, but still nothing compared to Versailles Palace near Paris (the home of Marie Antoinette). Then, we ventured outside to see the gardens, though they weren't as plentiful as Versailles was. We got access to the maze which also included a really fun playground. It was very interactive and had lots of different things for kids to do. This is a picture of me an Ani in the playground.

The glorieta was next. This is located at the top of a huge hill. This normally isn't a problem, but this time we had a stroller with a baby and I had a very badly sprained ankle. Eric pushed/carried the stroller and I just sucked it up and walked up this hill to the structure at the top...

As tough as it was, it was totally worth it for the view...

There was also a beautiful fountain at the top and we were able to find someone to take our picture.

After climbing back down the hill, we took a stroll through the privy gardens and then headed back to the city center. We spent about 4 hours at Schonbrunn and saw a good portion of it. We stopped at a couple of shops on the way back to the apartment and then Eric sent me back to the apartment early because he and Anya had to pick up something.

When they got back to the apartment, this is what they had with them:

Austrians also celebrated Mother's Day that day so Eric and Anya were able to find an amazing chocolate cake that said Happy Mother's Day in German. Anya was excited to share it with me!

We visited the Haus der Musik for a couple of hours. It had a lot of cool intearctive musical exhibits but Anya was really restfull for a lot of it so we weren't able to enjoy it as much as we had hoped. But I did get to play the nice baby grand piano in the lobby!

We had dinner that evening at an Italian restaurant suggested in the guidebook. It was a really small little restaurant. We had wine, rigatoni with eggplant, tortellini with spinach and cream sauce, and pizza bread. The meal was amazing and we sat really close to a man who was in Vienna on business. He worked for the IAEA (which stands for the International Atomic Energy Association) and he was there to work on some kind of nuclear treaty. He was a really interesting guy. After dinner, we headed back to the apartment to have some cake. Thankfully, our luck was better that day than the day before!