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.