Vienna

Vienna, described as Europe's cultural capital, is a metropolis with unique charm, vibrancy and flair. 

That's where we went for the Easter long weekend.  Since we had to visit a family staying in the south of Austria, we only had one day to explore Vienna.  But never the less, we managed to visit some places, try out some food and had a little bit of adventures too!

We arrived Wien(Vienna) on Friday in the late afternoon.  Immediately, we went for a walk.  Not far from our hotel was Votiv Kirche(Votiv Church).  The photo above is a view of the church from the Rathaus.

                                                           Burgtheater

                                                                          A nice wall at the University

                                                             Passed by some nice dome too :-)

Then it was time for dinner.  The kids and I would definitely try out the Wiener Schnitzel....

                                                                             Wiener Schnitzel (Puten)

And how could I not order the Sachertorte, a rich chocolate cake with a little apricot jam filling, serve traditionally with whipped cream.  It was a little too sweet for me.

We started early the next day, took the tram with the intention of going to the St. Stephen's Cathedral.  Following my husband's instructions, we ended up somewhere else....  "That's it."  I said, "I'll read the map from now".  So we started from the Volkstheater, then went to the Naturhistorisches Meseum.  The kids had a good time at the museum.

Lunch at the Museum's Cafe Nautilus was simple and nice.  Kids had Wiener sausages with bread.  And we had Wiener Gulasch soup.

                                                                                    

And Wiener Eiskaffee is always yummilicious!



                                A fabulous view of Kunsthistorisches Museum from the Cafe

Andrew appreciating a beautiful blue stone

Angelica loves crocodiles

Kunsthistorisches Museum

After that we headed to Hofburg and took a Carriage ride.  And when it was tea time, we were at one of the street near St. Stephen's Cathedral.

                                         Another Sachertorte for tea.  This one tasted much better!

 Kaiserschmarrn, soft, fluffy pancake that ripped into bite size and slightly roasted in a pan, served with applesauce.  Yumm!



Kaiserschmarrn was not on my 'food to try' list.  But I tried it anyway as I knew I wouldn't be able to get Salzburg Nockerl.

After tea and some shopping.  It was time to go back to the hotel for a rest.  While it was time to get out of the tram, my husband said that it was the next station.  I said no, he said yes.  And because of that we ended up somewhere else again.  After asking someone, bla bla bla, it was another wrong tram....  Funny?  Well not when you have two tired kids with you!  After another tram and more walking, we arrived our hotel safe and sound!

Looking for a nice restaurant for dinner near our hotel was a challenge, we walked and walked to find all the restaurants were closed.  On a Saturday evening?  Aren't Saturday evenings the busiest time for restaurants?

We finally found one near the Rathaus, a restaurant called Einstein I believe.  Kids just preferred to have Wiener Schnitzel, and again my husband had Gulasch soup!

I had Balkan-Pfanne,  kind of like Gulasch served with the yellow thing which was sort of like Gnocchi.

A closer look at the Gnocchi

That pretty much conclude our day in Wien.  The next day, we had to leave right after breakfast to the south of Austria, Klagenfurt.  Everything packed, hotel paid, we arrived the underground car park.......  We were stuck!  In the car park!  The machine kept saying that the ticket was not valid, it was given by the hotel, with the parking fees paid.

After talking to the hotel reception on the phone, bla bla bla, went to the autopay machine to activate the card(instructed by the reception), it still didn't work.  In the end, Georg gave up, pay an extra 15 Euro and hooray, we got out of the car park!

It was snowing lightly while we left Vienna.  Yes, snowing, in April. 

The drive to Klagenfurt was a nightmare.  Georg kept asking "where are the highway?"  "Ya, 20km more, and we'll be on a highway..."  We were up on the hills, or should I say mountains.  It was snowing, and all white.  The road was narrow, curvy, and ........  I had to take an aspirin because of that. 

We spent a night at our friends in Klagenfurt.  Early next morning we left for Hannover.  This time we were driving on a high way, heading to Salzburg.

                                                            

We could go left to Italy, or middle lane to Slovenia, right to Salzburg which leads to Germany.

While driving towards Salzburg, the GPS kept reminding us that there was a tunnel in front of us.  I found that odd.  So I click the options button and found that the GPS was set to 'avoid the tunnels'!!  So if you don't want to go under, then you have to go over, right?  That explained why we were crossing the mountains and were not using the highway from Vienna to Klagenfurt!  How silly!

Despite all the unpleasant adventures, we had a good time in Vienna.  It's a beautiful city that I would love to visit again and it's VERY clean.  No broken beer bottles.  ;-)  The drive to Salzburg was lovely as along the way we got to see beautiful scenery, beautiful mountains.  And we made it home to Hannover safe and tired.  :-)