Just back from a 4 day road trip to Vienna. Long and exhausting but Austria is so beautiful, loved it. We left on Wednesday evening, drove to Innsbruck, reaching around 9:30 pm. Next morning walked around old town, very beautiful, set against a huge mountain range and having the river Tyrol run through it. Set off for Vienna around 12 pm. We reached Vienna only at 6 in the evening, but it was a sunny long day so set out to explore the Prater amusement park near the hotel.
Prater park had lots of activities for kids to do, and after watching the girls bounce on the trampoline and go on the bouncy slide some 100 times we went to the biergarten in the park for a nice Viennese dinner of Wurstli for the hubby and apfelstrudel for me. Yummy.
The next morning (Friday) we went to Schon brunn palace. Its really huge set in a sprawling green campus. We knew the girls wouldn't be upto touring the inside of the palace, so we went instead to the Tiergarten which is part of the palace grounds. Its a long walk through the gardens, so we got to see the beautiful trees, plants and sculptures on the way. We loved the zoo, I know its odd to go visit a zoo in Vienna when we have one literally next door in Zurich, but the girls love animals and I had also read about the giant panda bear which this zoo had and was quite keen to see it. The zoo was very nice, it was housed in much smaller area than the Zurich zoo so we got to see a lot more. We saw a giant panda eating shoots and leaves (rather stuffing it in with its hands, amazing), giraffes running around, a hippo swimming lazily in the water, elephants playing, having a mud bath, and reaching out towards the visitors grabbing grass growing there. Amazing. Also got very close (through a glass wall of course) to a black jaguar, cheetah, and a lion which roared at us. In fact even the elephanth snorted loudly at us which was quite disconcerting. The aquarium section was also very nice with some horse shoe crabs we had not seen before and up close to the pink flamingos. I can go on and on, but the Vienna zoo is well worth a visit.
After the zoo we thought we should do some stuff for the adults also :) We saw the Rathaus (parliament), the Stephensdome - amazing inside and outside, and walked through the main old town till it got dark.
Next day we again went to Prater park for more fun stuff for the girls, S surprised me by enjoying herself on the spinning roller coaster with me. To be honest, I felt quite sick at the end of it. A also enjoyed the ship. We then went to the Hofburg palace, it was in the same area we had visited the previous day so we just walked around a bit, had a lovely lunch at the Cafe Hofburg (dessert was again apfel strudel) and set out for Hallstatt around 4 pm. I must say I loved the food in Vienna, there was quite a lot of stuff for vegetarians there. I had vegetarian strudel one of the days, and spinach strudel in a herb cream sauce the other day and both were amazing! The desserts are awesome of course.
We reached Hallstatt late Saturday evening. Its a beautiful small Austrian town set in the middle of the mountains along a lake. We were a bit unlucky with the weather, which cleared up only around the time we left (at 11 am the next morning). But the view was amazing, and we picked up some really cute wooden handicrafts.
So now that summer is here, back to holiday season again! Weather has been awful this year, hopefully the summer stays long.
Prater park had lots of activities for kids to do, and after watching the girls bounce on the trampoline and go on the bouncy slide some 100 times we went to the biergarten in the park for a nice Viennese dinner of Wurstli for the hubby and apfelstrudel for me. Yummy.
The next morning (Friday) we went to Schon brunn palace. Its really huge set in a sprawling green campus. We knew the girls wouldn't be upto touring the inside of the palace, so we went instead to the Tiergarten which is part of the palace grounds. Its a long walk through the gardens, so we got to see the beautiful trees, plants and sculptures on the way. We loved the zoo, I know its odd to go visit a zoo in Vienna when we have one literally next door in Zurich, but the girls love animals and I had also read about the giant panda bear which this zoo had and was quite keen to see it. The zoo was very nice, it was housed in much smaller area than the Zurich zoo so we got to see a lot more. We saw a giant panda eating shoots and leaves (rather stuffing it in with its hands, amazing), giraffes running around, a hippo swimming lazily in the water, elephants playing, having a mud bath, and reaching out towards the visitors grabbing grass growing there. Amazing. Also got very close (through a glass wall of course) to a black jaguar, cheetah, and a lion which roared at us. In fact even the elephanth snorted loudly at us which was quite disconcerting. The aquarium section was also very nice with some horse shoe crabs we had not seen before and up close to the pink flamingos. I can go on and on, but the Vienna zoo is well worth a visit.
After the zoo we thought we should do some stuff for the adults also :) We saw the Rathaus (parliament), the Stephensdome - amazing inside and outside, and walked through the main old town till it got dark.
Next day we again went to Prater park for more fun stuff for the girls, S surprised me by enjoying herself on the spinning roller coaster with me. To be honest, I felt quite sick at the end of it. A also enjoyed the ship. We then went to the Hofburg palace, it was in the same area we had visited the previous day so we just walked around a bit, had a lovely lunch at the Cafe Hofburg (dessert was again apfel strudel) and set out for Hallstatt around 4 pm. I must say I loved the food in Vienna, there was quite a lot of stuff for vegetarians there. I had vegetarian strudel one of the days, and spinach strudel in a herb cream sauce the other day and both were amazing! The desserts are awesome of course.
We reached Hallstatt late Saturday evening. Its a beautiful small Austrian town set in the middle of the mountains along a lake. We were a bit unlucky with the weather, which cleared up only around the time we left (at 11 am the next morning). But the view was amazing, and we picked up some really cute wooden handicrafts.
So now that summer is here, back to holiday season again! Weather has been awful this year, hopefully the summer stays long.
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