Yet again, it was a jam packed day of fun!
We were up early (earlier than our alarms even!) as our first/only planned event for the day started at 9 and we needed to eat before we went. We opted for the hotel breakfast, which wasn’t included, but we paid at the counter and were welcomed with a giant spread of items! In addition to the “typical fare” of breads, meats, cheeses, and so on, there was also scrambled eggs with veggies, a variety of sausages, some ham (I think), and hard-boiled eggs! There seemed to be buffet tables spread all over the restaurant area! There was even some fresh-cut watermelon slices! Everything was delicious, but I wasn’t super keen on the texture of the sausages. They were different in a way I wasn’t sure I could get behind. Following breakfast, we caught some transport to an area of the city that felt a little off the beaten path as we supposedly approached our destination…thankfully, we were in the right spot lol! Brandon had booked us a horse-drawn carriage ride for the morning! We were the only two native English speakers of the 20 or so people there, but that was okay! We basically got a private tour of the stables and such, since our guide explained things in English while the others had a tour as a group with a German guide. We got to pet some horses, one of which was named Jimmy. Jimmy enjoyed chewing on my shirt and he licked me a few times :) Our guide said Jimmy was his favorite! After about half an hour, all the carriages were ready with horses hooked up, so we were sent with our fiaker (horse driver) for an hour long venture into the heart of the city! Brandon and I ended up having a dad and daughter paired with us in our carriage. I don’t recall the dad’s name, but his daughter’s name was Aurelia, which I thought was beautiful! They were both from Austria, but Aurelia loves horses, so her dad had booked the carriage ride. He also told us he just loves Vienna, so he loves to come to the city. He was a former fitness equipment salesman, and you could tell by the charm :) He told us sooooo much history about Vienna, and Austria as a whole, and he gave us some recommendations for things to check out! It was really a nice ride! After the carriage ride, we decided to look into one of the attractions our salesman friend had told us about called Time Travel Vienna. It was a combination of a wax museum meets 4-D/VR experience that went through several hundred years of Austria’s history. Brandon and I were again the only English speakers, so we were given English audio guides that followed with the tour route. There were figurines of former emperors and empresses of Austria, composers like Mozart and Strauss, a doctor from the era of the bubonic plague, and so many more! At the period discussing WWII, there was a mock air raid shelter that gave you the experience of going through an air raid. There were VR goggles that put you in the middle of a ballroom dance (waltz) scene from a traditional party held by the emperors in their palaces. It was incredible! At the end of the tour, there was a video that recapped all the highlights from the tour from the perspective of a little girl going on a carriage ride with her parents while looking into a snow globe of Vienna. When it zoomed in on the snow globe, we got snowed on! It was definitely a neat experience! We got lunch at a small restaurant nearby. Brandon had roast beef and I got goulash that was to die for! We then worked on a “whirlwind tour” of some of the other major sights we wanted to see before we leave tomorrow. The first was the library at the University of Vienna. We got a chance to walk around the university a little until we found signage for the library. Unfortunately, it was closed today, which is only part of the normal hours for the time period between July 4th and 31st :/ We did find an auditorium open, though, and we sat in it for a little bit admiring both the cool air inside and the space overall. I found a brochure when we got to the university that gave some facts and figures that were seriously impressive, including the fact that it has been around for over 650 years! Heading from the university, we hoped to get to the Rathaus. They have a cool elevator in it that is constantly moving so you just hop on and hop off. Unfortunately, being Saturday, we’re pretty sure it was closed. But, we also got distracted going through the park area near the Rathaus, which is hosting a multi-week film festival with LOADS of food stands, so that also made it difficult to get to the building. The festival looked cool, though! We were both getting pretty tired by this point, but we worked our way to Schloss Schönbrunn. We didn’t take a tour, but we walked around the plaza and the gardens a bit. It is gigantic and made me marvel at the thought of castles in general and how they are such feats of engineering. Especially considering there weren’t modern construction tools and vehicles when they were built! Leaving Schönbrunn, we headed to our final place for the day, and the closest to our hotel, Schloss Belvedere. Again, we didn’t tour it, but we walked around the plaza of it, took photos, and walked through the garden to the street where we only had to make a quick turn and walk about 90 seconds to our hotel! We took a short break to collect our energy and charge our phones before we went out to dinner at a lovely pizza place called Riva. Coming back to the hotel, we got cleaned up and repacked for heading out tomorrow. We very well may be popping to Salzburg before going back to Germany later in the day, so keep following along to see how the journey unfolds! Until then, enjoy the pictures!
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