So much for catching up on sleep. I went to sleep easily just before 2am, but was up wide awake at 4:30am and never went back to sleep. So Tired Right Now! I may have to finish this in the morning. Dan slept about 6 hours and he felt great.

We went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast around 7am. It had more variety than the lounge but not necessarily of stuff we would eat (like cereal). They did have congee and I had a couple of bowls of that. It’s an Asian rice porridge; I haven’t had it since the Hilton in Venice. This was better than that, but Dan thought it was too salty.

We headed out about 8:30 and caught a subway in the station across from the hotel directly to Schonbrunn Palace, just a 12 minute ride away. The estate has been around over 300 years; the current iteration built in the mid 1700’s during the reign of Maria Theresa. It’s got over 1400 rooms, several gardens including a maze. We walked about 2.5 miles just on this property and stayed about 4 hours.

 It opened at 8:30; we got there about 9am so it wasn’t too crowded yet.
 Once again, photos weren’t allowed. Once again, Dan got a few in. Someone’s bedroom :) We don’t remember whose!
 “The yellow room” is all I remember about this one. That thing in the corner? We saw one in every room and finally figured out it’s a heater of some kind.
 The site of Mozart’s first public performance, age 6. (This town is crazy for Mozart if I haven’t said that already…)
 The ballroom, the prettiest room in the house we thought. Also the spot where Kennedy and Kruschkev met in 1961.
 They called this the “millions” room because it was the most expensive room in the house. All the wood is imported from somewhere in South America.
 From the back porch if you will. That’s Neptune Fountain at the end of the gardens and Gloriette above it.  Originally built in 1775, Gloriette was destroyed in WWII and has been restored a couple of times since. We headed there next.

 

 Looking back at the palace from the fountain before heading up to Gloriette.

 

 Gloriette just houses an observation deck and a cute little cafe.

 

 

 The red dot is where we were at Gloriette. We came down to the left edge of the pool then took that small trail down that does a half moon through the woods. It was a lovely walk. We were on our way to #4 on the map, the maze.

 

 This turned out to be pretty hard. It took us about 10 minutes to find our way to the center where this observation deck was.

 

 These were “harmony stones” by the observation deck, a feng shui item around balancing energy for couples. Or something like that :)

 

 Notice the springs. There were “bouncing boards”, there were 3 of them, and they were pretty fun. Once you got going on it just the right way it was hard to stop and difficult to keep balance.

 

 A human kaleidoscope in the middle of the gardens.

 

Next was “The Apple Strudel Show.” Very sweet girl demonstrated how to make perfect apple strudel. With samples of course.
 Watching her work with the dough was pretty amazing. So thin you could read a newspaper through it, but it didn’t break even little bit.
 Making a big log of the apples before rolling it.
 Beginning of the roll….
 And the end of the roll. Then she asks “how do I get it from the board to the pan to put it in the oven?” Dan says “with the cloth.” She asks him to come help her for getting the answer right. Priceless.
 He got an apron and cute little hat. This is him spreading melted butter on it.
 And a little certificate at the end!
 Next was the Carriage House. This was the funeral carriage used for Franz Joseph in 1916. The empire essentially ended with his death, and was broken up after WW1.
 An “every day” carriage used by the monarchy.
 Franz Joseph’s official state carriage.
 The carriage used by Empress Elizabeth for her marriage to Franz Joseph.
 Right out of a fairy tale.
One of the gardens on the side of the palace.
We took the subway from there to Naschmarkt. This is an outdoor market nearly a mile long. Most of the vendors seemed to be Greek, Turkish or Italian. Lots of fruits, especially dried, nuts, sausage, olives, baklava, falafel, etc.
 We stopped at a Turkish place for lunch. This drink was sparkling water with mint, lime and ginger.
 We got the mixed grill for two: chicken, beef, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, falafel, salad, french fries. It was all excellent.
 Olives.

After this we were supposed to make our way over to the museums we didn’t get to last night. We never quite made it in – just walked past on our way back to the hotel about 5pm because we were so dang tired at that point! Because on our way to it we happened across the Museum Quartier and Dan couldn’t resist. He’s never met a museum he didn’t want to go into I swear.

 We went into the Leopold first, which housed mostly the work of a couple of local artists. This was a view into the courtyard of the Quarter from that museum. The black thing across the way is MUMOK where we went next. The Leopold, by the way, is #10 of 114 museums on TripAdvisor. Keep that in mind. (The museum we skipped? #1 on the museum list and #3 overall. Oh well. We’ll get there tomorrow…)
 I already forgot the name of the artist, but this was one Dan really liked in the Leopold. For the most part it wasn’t our thing, but because it focused on the work of a few artists, at least it made sense from a body of work perspective. It was modern, but not the sort we laugh at.
 Cute little cafe in the Leopold.
The MUMOK, on the other hand, is exactly the kind of modern art museum we laugh and shake our head at. Really, I said to Dan? Sure, he says, it will give us something to make fun of. MUMOK = Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation (something must get lost in the translation) and was everything we hate about modern art. It’s #41 of 114 on TripAdvisor. Why do we do this? So we can have ridiculous conversations like this:
Dan: It’s a vagina.
Me: It’s a piggy bank.
Dan: No, look, it’s a vagina!
Me: No, it’s a piggy bank that looks like a vagina!
Seriously, that conversation happened. Thankfully, photos were not allowed here either.
Dan did like the elevators though, which is the primary reason he likes to go into every museum he comes across: the architecture.

We were drop dead tired after this and took the subway back to the hotel. We only walked 9.9 miles today. Slackers! We were back before 5:30 or so. We made our way down to the steam room for a bit, then up to the lounge for dinner. We just stayed in the rest of the evening. Dan was asleep before 8:30. I went down to the steam room one more time to get enough energy to finish this. And it worked! It’s 9:39pm and I’ll be headed to bed soon. Hopefully to sleep well this time!

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