Sorry for the delay in updates for this last weekend (and yes, we still haven’t gotten the Florence pictures up). Christine has been traveling, and I was getting ready to make the trip back to Portland.
Last weekend, we met up with Mom and Dad in Vienna. This was their last stop before heading back to New Mexico, and my last weekend in Europe. Vienna is pretty beautiful. The Hapsburgs really spared no expense in making it the capital of the world at the time. Now, granted, many of the buildings were originally built for their own use, but today they are open to the grimy masses, which was good news for us!
Mom, Dad, and I spent Friday walking around the city and ended up at the Imperial Treasury after lunch. They have an incredible collection of treasure amassed by the Hapsburgs during their reign. One of the most impressive pieces was a container carved from a 3,800 caret emerald. This thing was HUGE! After the museum, we hurried out to the Airport to meet Christine when she arrived from Berlin. The four of us headed back to the apartment and then did some more sightseeing before realizing that it was time to eat again and most restaurants were already full for the night… oops… We ended up at a nice Italian place, where they took pity on us and found a table. The food was great!
Saturday, we got an impressively early start for the Franks and made our way out to the Schonbrun Palace – the Hapsburg summer residence. This complex is amazing! I don’t know if I have ever seen a palace on this scale, clearly money was of no concern for these people. We walked through the grounds to the Zoo, which is the oldest in the world (this is their claim, I have not verified it). I was really impressed by how extensive the Zoo was. The exhibits were really nice and they had everything from horses and cows to Pandas and Koalas. We over-stayed at the zoo, so we sprinted back to the subway station and made it to the restaurant just in time to make our reservation. Christine and I shared a traditional Viennese dish of a pork chop in what I can only describe as a crispy, sourdough empanada. It was quite tasty and perhaps something that we will need to try to emulate at home (when we have an oven again). I miss having a full kitchen…
Sunday morning, Mom and Dad had an early flight, so we bid them farewell and then promptly went back to sleep for a few hours. After waking up the second time and getting fed, we headed off to the Haus des Meeres, which is an Aquarium with a bit of a zoo flare as well (monkeys and birds in one of the habitats). The aquarium is built in one of 6 flack towers that were constructed around Vienna to protect it from the Allies in World War Two. The aquarium is as impressive as the Zoo, and kept us occupied for several hours. After lunch, we headed to the Natural History Museum. We only had an hour and a half so we were barely able to scratch the surface of this enormous collection, originally a private collection of the Hapsburgs, of course. The minerals and gems, meteorites, and Dinosaurs were pretty excellent! From there it was a quick trip back to the airport, and back to Zurich. Good weekend!