Elisa and I arrived in Vienna by plane on Saturday morning. Our hotel was by Schönnenbrun Palace, so that’s where we went first. The gardens are pretty awesome. There’s even a labyrinth garden. They have a few versions. Two small versions include brainteasers and games. In the palace itself we saw lots of old regal stuff. It kept us pretty interested, even though that’s not normally the kind of thing that entertains us. For the rest of our vacation, we were saying things to each other like, “This castle isn’t as cool as the one in Vienna.” We even saw a presentation where they give you a recipe for Äpfelstrudel and teach you how to make it. Of course there were samples which were really good. It looked pretty difficult to make so I do not think we’ll be attempting it any time soon.
Elisa and I were up late Friday night, and we were starting to feel it. We stopped back at our hotel for an afternoon nap. Party on.
We tried to follow a walking tour from a Frommer’s Guide. We got kind of lost. The sun was going down. So we pretty much bagged the tour. Our fall back was to eat the famous “Sächer Torte.” We just kind of wandered around and ate stuff that smelled good.
On Sunday we took a train up the Wachau Valley and then we took a boat back down the Danube. There’s little castles you can see en route. Elisa taught me about the oldest form of pornography (a statue) that was unearthed beside the river.
The evening was really fun. We went to the Präter amusement park. There are the best rides there. We were doing all sorts of high spinning, upside-down, swinging rides.
Monday we walked around Baden. We just window shopped. The original plan was to check out the natural hot springs but it was just a dumb pool. We tried to make the most of the trip by sampling some local Traubenmost (grape juice). Then we watched chestnuts plummet from the trees while we waited for the train. Lucky Chad got smacked on the head by one of the falling nuts.