Vienna - Day 2

The weather was supposed to be beautiful on our 1st day there, so we elected to go see Schonbrunn Palace, which was on the top of our 'must see' list. Schonbrunn Palace was the summer home of the Hapsburgs, and while it's not quite as impressive as the Palace of Versailles, it's pretty close :). We arrived there pretty early (for European standards anyway) and that was nice because there weren't too many tourists going through the palace when we did. We got to bring our stroller in, which is typically not the case, and Carsten rode in the stroller for about half of our time going through. He started getting antsy, so we put him in the ergo carrier for the rest of the tour. We loved seeing all the rooms and finding out more about how they lived. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside (so of course we had to buy a book about the palace to have photos :) ), but here's a few photos of the front side of the palace:

Shonbrunn Palace

'Can I get out now?'

Proof we were all there.

Carsten fell asleep in the ergo carrier as we were walking out of the palace, which was completely unexpected because it was only 10 am (I guess he was bored and figured there was nothing else for him to do ;) ). We decided to let him sleep thinking that even if he took a short nap, he'd probably take one later in the afternoon. Well, ultimately, we were wrong because he only slept for 30 min and would not take a nap the rest of the day, but hey, 6:30 pm bedtime is still nice :). While he was sleeping, we had fun admiring the park and taking photos. And our absolute favorite part is that there was no need to worry about Carsten so we could do what we wanted to without having to chase a certain someone :). Here's some photos of while he was sleeping:

30 min nap wonderkid.

Enjoying our precious moments of naptime.

beautiful.

Since he fell asleep unexpectedly, we did not have a chance to sunscreen him, hence the umbrella.

This is the point when he woke up and said 'WATER!'. And that was that.

We continued on up the hill to see the Gloriette, and spent some time admiring the view of the palace and Vienna. Then we took a touristy train tour around to the other side of the park where we found some sandwiches for lunch, which we then ate in the park. Here are some photos by the Gloriette:

The Gloriette

View of Shonbrunn and Vienna

Cartsen having fun :)

riding the train past a very strange fountain

for some reason, I love standing in the middle of an intersection of these avenues. 

After lunch, we walked around for a bit, and then found ourselves in the maze where there was a super-nice playground with a 'DIGGER!' So of course, we played for quite a while despite the sprinkles of rain. We then went through the maze, which was surprisingly fun and was a pretty low-stress let Carsten run around time. Here's a few photos:

'DIGGER!'

Carsten could have spent all day here.

In one of the mazes, they had a few different fun things. This one was kind of like DDR, piano style.

 After the maze it was starting to look pretty stormy, so we headed to the Emperor's private gardens. Ironically, when we visited the Palace of Versailles, it also got stormy right before we left, so we have some similar pictures.

Getting stormy

Emperor's private gardens

Right after we took this last photo it started to thunderstorm, so we elected to head back to our apartment and give Carsten, our 30 min nap wonderchild, an early bedtime. All in all it was a fantastic day!

Vienna - Day 1

Andy attended the EGU conference in Vienna last week, so we took the opportunity to see Vienna as a family for a few days before the conference started. We flew out Wednesday morning (a week and a half ago) on a direct flight from Zurich to Vienna. Can I just say how much I love it that the Zurich airport has a play area (see photo below)?

Loves this truck.

Big fan of the rocking airplane!

Can I just say how easy an hour flight is? It also helps that Andy was with me, that we got bulkhead seats in row 1, and that Carsten absolutely loves airplanes. Carsten spends most of our time at the airport and on the airplane saying 'airplane!' and 'helicopter!' - which makes it pretty fun :). We flew Niki, which I'd have to say that even though it's a budget airline, we had about the best experience on a plane that we've ever had (in terms of flight attendants (they were actually nice!), service (even gave Carsten complimentary baby food), and on-time service).

After we landed in Vienna, we collected our bags and headed into Vienna via train. We made our connections to Sudtirolerplatz and got the keys to our two-bedroom apartment that we were renting for a week and a half. We chose to rent a place like this because we had the option of cooking for ourselves (which we did) and we all get our own room (everyone sleeps better!). And on top of all that, it was quite a bit cheaper than a hotel room downtown. It wasn't in the most aesthetically pleasing portion of town, but it was safe, clean, cheap, and roomy, which is what we needed. An added bonus was that it was 2 blocks from a U-bahn site, giving us easy access to Vienna.

We immediately put Carsten down for a nap in his tent, which after about 10 min of crying he took a pretty good nap. We sent Andy out to get some lunch for us, and then after Carsten woke up, we headed into the city center to Stephensplatz, where Stephensdom and a pedestrian center were located. The church was quite pretty, but there was something going on inside, so we could only stand in the back. Here's a few photos:

Stephensdom. So pretty!

Carsten got to walk around Stephensplatz, which he enjoyed.

Inside of the church. (Most of these did not turn out)

We then proceeded to wander and found ourselves walking past this shop, and I just had to take a picture for Miss Megan Vivian :).

They were even having a sale!

Viv :).

We kept on wandering and found ourselves near the Hofburg Palace (winter palace for the Hapsburgs and is still in use for museums and government use today). We actually went to the Hofburg Palace area quite a few times, so you'll probably see a few more photos than the ones here:

Wing of the Neue Hofburg.

There were carriages everywhere for hire in the city. We did not do them, but Carsten had fun saying 'neigh' whenever he saw one (which was a lot!).

Carriage rides

Hofburg Palace!

All in all, it was a great 1st day as our travel went great and we got to get our first glimpses of Vienna.

Easter Weekend

We had a wonderfully long Easter weekend because Good Friday and Easter Monday are federal holidays, meaning, days that don't count against vacation days! We had talked about trying to go somewhere, but elected to instead stay close to home in the hopes of doing some nearby hiking. However, the weather did not cooperate for hiking since it was either raining or snowing! Here's a few 'before' and 'after' shots:

Before Easter weekend it was beautiful and sunny with flowers blooming:

Flower boxes in Egg.

Flowering trees by our house.

Close up of the trees.

Playing outside in the nice weather :).

 Easter morning photos:

Snowy trees!

Quite pretty actually :)

Handsome little guy with his first car.

He got an ouch and was showing me where I needed to kiss it. Don't worry, my kiss fixed it.
 I've always wanted that particular Mom superpower :).

Cheesy baby on Easter morning.

My handsome boys :).

We discovered by accident that Carsten LOVES my hand broom. He would not let it out of his sight and he actually had a bit of a melt-down when we took away because it was bath time. We did tell him that he could have it again in the morning - lo and behold the next morning it was the first thing he asked for (it was put away in the closet in the hopes that he had forgotten it). I actually ended up buying a new one just so he could play with it because it kind of grossed me out that he wanted played with my relatively dirty one. Here's a photo of Carsten on the first day of his broom obsession:

Let me help Mom!

Since the weather was rotten, we had mostly family time in the house, but we did do a few things over the weekend as well. Andy took Carsten to the zoo in the morning on Friday so I could work on my papers from graduate school. On Saturday, we did some organizing of shelves and packed the first of many bags to send back home. We went to church on Sunday and got to talk with family back home, and then on Monday we all went to the indoor swimming pool in the morning for some family time. All in all, it was nice to have an enforced 'staycation' so we could get some things done around the house and have some low-stress family time. We love family time!

Mallorca - Day 6

We checked out of our hotel after breakfast, loaded up our tiny car, and made the 1 hour drive up to the north side of the island to the town of Alcudia to see the Medieval city wall and the Roman ruins of Pollentia. We arrived right at 10 am when the ruins were supposed to open; we waited for a few min, but no one came to open it so we continued on to see the city wall, which was right across the street. The city wall was really pretty and we even found some stairs so we could walk along the top a small stretch of the wall. We had a fun time taking photos and walking through the cute town, which was mostly within the walls :). Here's a few photos of the walls:

Andy and Carsten by the city wall :).

The streets of Alcudia.

Walking along the city wall!

City wall.

Steps up to the wall.

love the palm trees next to the wall.

Carsten by the wall.

Another gate - it's missing the wall...

Strongman!

Walking along the town.

This kid loves to put buckles together :).

We found a little playground and Carsten made a friend.

They played together for a while :).

After seeing the city to our satisfaction, we went back to the Roman ruins of Pollentia to see if they were open. And someone had decided to open them, so we went in and were greeted with a wonderful view of the ruins. It was pretty hot, Carsten was getting tired, and it was near lunchtime, so we had to hurry through the ruins. I convinced Andy to let us walk all the way to the amphitheater (it was a bit of hike) even though Carsten was almost falling asleep. We ended up making Carsten walk most of the way to keep him awake - poor kid :). All in all, it was really fun to see something that was so old (BC era).

Pollentia Roman Ruins

Love the columns.

Walking along history.

Roman amphitheater

Carsten climbing onto the stage area.

Carsten is all done. Time to go!

Since Carsten was tired and hungry we hustled back to the car to give him a quick lunch. Andy went out and found us some sandwiches while I fed Carsten and then we started driving to the Cap de Formenter, which is a pretty drive through the mountainous NW region of the island. Carsten fell asleep immediately, and Andy once again was a champion driver. We enjoyed the scenery through the windows of the car except for about a minute when we couldn't resist a look out point. Luckily Carsten stayed sleeping throughout the scenic drive, and then we started the ~1 hour drive back to the airport. Carsten woke up partway through, but ironically, after chatting for a minute, he fell back asleep, which was pretty cute. He just couldn't keep his eyes open. We actually ended up driving past the airport because we were a bit early and we wanted to extend Carsten's nap as long as possible. Here's a few photos from our drive:

Mallorca Mountain.

Sleepy dude

Had to get out of the car to see this :).

Proof we were there!

There were a lot of windmills near Palma, I'm not sure why. None of them actually spun.

The rental car was returned, and our check in went pretty smoothly as well. The Swiss Air agents seemed confused that we wanted to take our car seat on board since there was a space next to me, but they let us do it anyway. However, once we tried to board the plane, the flight attendants seemed shocked that we had a car seat and made us leave it at the gate, which was a bit confusing and incredibly frustrating. It seems as though Europeans don't travel with their car seats the same way I'm used to seeing in the US. Oh well, at least we'll know for the future. On our way home the pilot announced that he had requested a special route through the Alps since it was so clear. So we had gorgeous aerial views of the Matterhorn and Jungfrau with the pilot guiding pointing out each major mountain. It was a fantastic end to an amazing vacation :). Here's a few photos:

PRETTY!

What we thought was the Matterhorn. It wasn't, but we didn't get a photo... :).

The valley we took a train through when we took the Glacier Express last summer (Visp and Brig area).

Jungfrau, the highest point in Europe!

The clouds that cloud our view of the mountains most days... :)

Our little adventurer.

Once we landed we got our bags (yay!) and then headed home. It was a late night for Carsten, but worth it for the totally fun day. Also considering the late night, he did great on our ride home, which lucky for us, is pretty typical :). What a great vacation! 

Next up in April: Vienna!