Vienna, Austria

Wow, lots has happened since our last post...The past 4 days in Vienna have been wonderful! When we arrived it was pouring down rain, so we decided to make it a laundry day and play with Tyson indoors for the majority of the day. Really noticing the value of having ‘down days’ where we can relax and not have a full day of activities planned. It’s refreshing to watch a familiar movie or two in German, even if we don’t know what their saying. Fortunately, Ace Ventura When Nature Calls came on and Marshall and I have seen it about 100 times each, so we were saying the line in English before the voice over actor said it in German. If you want a night of some serious fun, grab a bottle of wine and try that for a night, lol.

For our first 3 nights in Vienna we stayed at a super trendy hotel. They randomly have only pictures of dogs on the walls of the hallways. Not just any dogs. 1 dog, a pug, and it’s the same pug…all over the walls. I don’t have to say it but it was probably the coolest thing Tyson has ever seen. It got to a point during our stay that he’d point to the door and we knew what he wanted. Marshall would look at him and say ‘The dogs?’ Tyson would light up bright eyed like it was Christmas morning. Then Marshall would say ‘The dogs ON THE WALL??’ and he’d jump and laugh then walk/crawl through the hallways point out every single picture. Really, really cute and fun times.

The hotel has a nice restaurant and lounge area that had a pool table. On the first night we ate a traditional Austrian dinner in the restaurant then started playing pool. A little boy came out of nowhere to join us and immediately started picking up the balls as we’re playing and moving them around the table. We laughed and gave him a look and he smiled and let us keep playing. Turns out he only spoke German, so I got to practice the little bit of German I remembered from high school. I asked him: What’s your name? (Fritz); How old are you? (5); Where is your mother? (Long response I didn’t understand); then I asked “Do you have a girl friend? (He gave me a grossed out face and shook his head no, haha).

Later that evening the bar had a viewing of the finale of their famous show “Song Contest”, think the Voice or any other American singing show like that but add 60 years of history and countless countries in the mix. To say the least, it was a HUGE deal here. Funny enough, the show was actually filmed live in Vienna that night since the winner of last season was a bearded lady from Vienna (long story, but interesting if you want to look it up). Having a kid is what officially makes you ‘old’ for those who wanted to know. The show didn’t start until 9pm so that meant we’d have to watch it in our room so Tyson could sleep. For kicks, I guess, the person who checked us in decided the best room for a family with a toddler would be the one directly above the bar and windows facing the front door. You know where this is going…Europeans are crazy nuts for their country’s singers on this show and wants everyone to know it. This went on for 4 hours until 1 am when (finally) the Swedish team won. BUUUT, just because the show is over doesn’t mean the celebration has to stop, does it? No, it does not. In fact, it continued until about 3am (what fun!). Somehow Tyson managed to sleep through the entire thing, lucky guy.

The following morning it was just cloudy with a few sprinkles here and there. We decided to walk into the city center, a good 20 minute walk from our hotel. We saw all the palaces and beautiful churches and stopped at a few playgrounds for Tyson to get out of the stroller and play with some kids. At one point on the walk we happened upon a huge shopping street. I’ve been wearing the same 5 outfits for the last month, so I was excited to do a little shopping to say the least. Only one problem…it was Sunday and pretty much the entire country closes down on Sunday! They really have their priorities on the work-life balance thing figured out here. Too bad for the tourists. We were able to find a café that was open to have lunch and people watch though. I was also super excited to see a Starbucks after being deprived for the past few weeks. After lunch we went to St. Stephens Cathedral, a landmark in Vienna and found it surrounded with a sort of street market with vendors selling jewelry, toys, and food/drinks. Travel tip: if you see a sign for raspberry wine, you stop and try it (period). It was amazing and it was only 3 Euros for a glass! After the glass of wine, we started wondering how far we walked already. Quick mental math put us at about 5 miles, and we were 2.5 miles away from our hotel. We were getting pretty tired and ready to relax with Tyson so we headed back to the hotel and called it good for our second day in Vienna.

The next morning I was excited to go shopping since I haven’t been able to yet. The weather was supposed to be relatively nice and no rain was in the forecast. We got up early, packed up the day bag and off we went to find the shopping area we found the day before. Oh wait….the only problem is that Monday was a religious holiday that we didn’t know about and all the shops were closed (again!). Dang it! We were really stumped on what to do because we felt we saw most of the walkable sites from our hotel and hadn’t done much research on places worth driving to around town. Fortunately, the Austrian couple we met in Tuscany that we mentioned in an early post actually reached out to us through our blog and we’ve been in touch ever since! They’d been recommending a lot of great places to go and the zoo was on the top of their list. The zoo in Vienna is actually the oldest zoo in the world dating all the way back to 1752. It is beautiful and you could tell by looking at the cages that they were super old but they had done a great job at keeping them in pristine condition. Tyson had a blast, of course, animals are by far his favorite thing in the entire world. We ended up spending about 6 hours at the zoo before heading back to the hotel. That night we invited our Austrian friends, Andreas and Sylva, to meet us for dinner at our hotel. They are from Vienna and live only 20 minutes from the hotel so it worked out perfectly. They ended up ordering a cheeseburger and BBQ chicken wings and we had wiener schnitzel and a traditional Austrian chicken dish (go figure). We had a great time and chatted with them for a good 4 hours about everything you can imagine: money, politics, religion, you name it. Andreas speaks great English and Silva is able to speak and understand it quite well. Anything she didn’t quite understand Andreas would translate into German and vice versa. We learned that they also traveled with their son when he was young for an extended period and have traveled a great deal since then…Austrians apparently get 5+ weeks of vacation a year! It was awesome to hear about their travel stories and get suggestions on where to go and where not to go based on their experience and we are inspired by their ability to organize travel with groups of friends- definitely something we will do when we get back. We all bonded so well over the evening that we decided to hang out the next day.

These guys are seriously cool. Andreas actually took off work the entire day to hang out with us (thanks man!) J Based on their suggestion, we checked out of our hotel and moved to a different hotel that is closer to their house. It’s a palace (no big deal) on top of a hill with an epic view! After we dropped our bags in the room, they picked us up at our hotel and we headed to a café at the top of Vienna’s highest mountain that had the best view of the city of Vienna. Although it was a little drizzly out the view was still amazing and they pointed out places of interest to us. Andreas showed us the hospital where he works (in Finance), and we had a great look at the Danube river. We had a cappuccino and a couple desserts (for breakfast) then drove over to a winery that is located in the basement of a monastery dating back to the 12th century. The wine was great and the ambiance of this place was even better. There is an original water well covered in moss that Tyson really got a kick out of. Andreas and Silva were great with Tyson and he loved playing with them. Andreas was a great sport all day and didn’t mind that Tyson made him his new best friend and personal ‘pick me up and show me this’ chaperone for the day. Silva quickly found out that his feet are ticklish and that he will play peek-a-boo with you for as long as you can stand it.

When we got done with the wine tasting, Tyson fell asleep in the car so they gave us a nice tour of the city and told us all about the history of the area, buildings, etc. We stopped at a local brewery for lunch where I had chicken schnitzel (surprise, surprise) and Marshall had chili con carne and sampled some of Andreas and Sylva’s lunches as well. All of it was delicious! After our cappuccino/dessert for breakfast, wine tasting, beer/lunch fest, we decided the best next thing to do would be to go eat some more dessert. Andreas suggested we go to the King’s Bakery near the Kings Castle (not exact translations, but close). Apparently, every tourist in Vienna had the same idea and the wait was pretty long so we decided to get Starbucks and walk around the area for a bit longer. On the way back to our hotel, they were very kind to stop at a grocery store so we could fill up on the essentials like baby wipes, bottled water, etc. Again, super awesome people. We really can’t thank them enough for the wonderful day we had today. Tyson, Shelly and I will always remember the generosity, love, and care you showed us. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts and we look forward to returning the favor when you make it to our neck of the woods some day!!

Tomorrow we are leaving Vienna and it will always hold a special place for us because of yall! Thanks again :)

Next stop: Hallstatt, Austria