Vienna - Part 1

Last weekend (3/17 - 3/18) we made an overnight trip to Vienna, Austria. Our goal was not to see everything in Vienna but to #1. Get out of town for the weekend & #2. Basically scout out the city for future visits. Mission Accomplished.

We left Saturday morning. It took us about 3 hours to get to Vienna, including the ridiculous amount of time spent getting gas (5 min to pump gas, 15 min to wait in line to pay). Lesson we learned: Saturday morning is not the time to get gas.

We did not over-prepare for this trip. Again, we were just looking to have a relaxing weekend away and therefore did not have a map of the city or a list of sites to see. What we did have was door-to-door internet driving directions from our house to the Marriott-Vienna. The directions were PERFECT and the hotel was easy to find. The only problem we had was that we did not see it until we were right on top of it and passed it. No problem, just turn around, right? Except it was a one way street (of course). OK, we'll just turn down this street and double back, right? 45 minutes later we stumbled across one of the three streets named in our internet directions and we were back on track. This is where a map of the city would have been helpful, laid back weekend or not.

After checking in, parking the car, etc. it was about 1:00pm and the kids wanted a happy meal. We were able to walk around and window shop on our way to McDonalds. We started to walk around some more after lunch but the weather was colder than we had expected and it started to rain so we headed back to the hotel. VJ (& I) had a quick nap while Anna & Katie scoped out the hotel. Then it was off to the kids favorite part of the trip: The hotel pool.

It somewhat annoys me that the kids' favorite part of visiting a new European city was the hotel pool. However, I've just resigned myself that this is how it will be. I have visions of Katie, in 3rd (or 4th) grade back in Houston and the teacher asking her what she liked best about living in Europe and her answer being "Well, the hotel pool in Vienna was nice and the one in Rome had a slide, but I have to say that the Paris hotel pool really was the best."

Sunday we had a great breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Anna summed it up best: "VJ had scrambled eggs, Katie had waffles, you had French toast and I had Eggs over easy and I got to eat with everyone."

Not to waste a lot of time on Breakfast, but I do have to mention one thing. Breakfast was set up buffet style with an egg-to-order station. There were three options for breakfast:
1. I can't remember the exact name but it boiled down to: Cereal & Fruit
2. "Continental" - this included the above with the addition of Waffles, French Toast, pastries, cheese and the Egg station.
3. "American Style" - all of the above plus bacon, sausage and a bunch more stuff that Americans would never eat, especially not for breakfast. It was like prosciutto and fish-something and just nasty non-breakfasty food. It was like whoever named it had never met an American before.

The weather on Sunday was MUCH improved...one might even say that it was GORGEOUS. We spent the morning just walking around, taking pictures and enjoying the sites. We went through several beautiful parks and past many old, beautiful buildings including the Vienna Opera House and just had an enjoyable day together.

The drive back was non-eventful and we look forward to going back.

Here are the pictures from the trip:

On Friday night we put the digital camera in it's docking station to make sure that it was fully charged and I can confirm that yes, when we returned on Sunday, it was fully charged. Success!

So we bought this disposable camera for 15 Euros. That's equivalent to about $20 USD. I don't really know how much things cost in the US (everything costs one swipe of the credit card) but I'm thinking I got robbed. I do know that I wanted to puke when the nice camera store lady told me the price.

As soon as we get them developed, I will post some pictures from this trip. If too much time passes, I'll just Google up some pictures of Vienna and photoshop the kids in.