Day 28 - First day in Paris - Preview

Weather: 70 and fair.  A huge welcome relief to all of us after mid'90's and humid in Italy.

Noah's haul: 20 euro-cents

Leaving the Best Western Orly..   Good beds, good sleep

Paris metro and bad tickets

Amazing apartment overlooking the Place des Vosges.

Walking to the Centre Pompidou
http://www.ramblr.com/module/trip/mymap_viewer.php?trip_id=1718

Lunch at Le Georges (Tripadvisor)

Centre Pompidou and modern art museum

A little down time and food shopping

Metro tickets, Bastille.
Map: Evening metro and walk

L'arc de Triomphe

Dinner at Vesuvio (Tripadvisor) on the Champs-Élysées

Day 19–Saltzburg and the Second Night Train

Weather: Low 80’s and partly cloudy, with chance of afternoon rain

Noah has taken to the habit of looking around for money on the ground during our rest and navigation breaks.  Today’s haul: 12 cents

Staying a the Schloss Leopoldskron produced a restful night.  It is located a little outside of Saltzburg (still walking distance) near this picturesque lake, so there was no city noise or other things to disturb our slumber.

First up was breakfast at the palace in what looked like the main ballroom or dinning hall.  It had to be the most impressive place I have eaten breakfast at.  The hall was decorated similar to all the others palaces we had seen, including paintings on the walls and ceiling, and all the ornamentation and details on the walks and woodwork.  Oh, and I shouldn’t forget the wonderful view we could see out the window of the Alps across the beautiful lake.  The breakfast was good, mixing some American favorites with more traditional Austrian fair.  Noah even had some chocolate yogurt and liked it.

After breakfast, it was time to pack up and check out of our hotel. A quick taxi ride across the city landed us back at the train station.  We stopped off here to leave our bags and continue the tour of the city until the evening train.

The train lockers were not to difficult to figure out, once we found them.  Fortunately, they had some big lockers, which allowed us to get all of our bags into two of them.
A short walk from the train station landed us in a little park, where we enjoyed the shade, plotted our plans for the day, and let the kids run around a little.  It wasn’t minutes after we arrived until the kids had joined some local kids climbing in one of the park trees.

Just over a little hill in the park was the start of the beautiful Mirabell gardens surounding the Mirabell Palace.  The steps leading down to the garden, we believe, is the location of the “do-re-me” song from Song of Music.  Taking our time, we strolled through several of the gardens, enjoying the beautiful flowers and the scenes of the Festung Hohensalzburg and prominent hills framing the view from the gardens.

At one end of the garden we found a free WIFI spot, which allowed us to get online and take care of some travel plans and look up a few more things.  Everyone took a break and enjoyed the shade on a hot day.  More pictures and fun.  We may have stayed a little to long, however, as a afternoon shower rolled in requiring us to hide out under a tree for a little while.  It was a refreshing rain and not something the Oregonians in us were afraid to make a quick dash through to get to our next activity.

The high-light of the day’s activities was a performance of “The Magic Flute” at the Marionette theatre of Saltzburg.  As we entered the building, I was pretty impress, it was a first class setup, similar to any other theatre or opera house you may go to.  Inside was a small café where we got some refreshments before the show started.

The performance of “The Magic Flute” was great. The marionettes were pretty impressive, and the amount of expression the players were able to portray with them was quite amazing.  A few times during the performance, I forgot these were not real actors.  I will admit that I wasn’t sure what to expect, but enjoyed the performance and was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did.
I believe everyone enjoyed it, including the kids.  Fortunately, they had shorted the opera down to about one hour in length, which is about the maximum length our kids will stay still, so that worked out well.  The Magic Flute has some pretty fanciful scenes, which were well done by the theatre, holding Noah’s and Katy’s attention.  The adaptation also had some kid entertaining scenes with funny interactions between the marionettes.  Noah even took the time to explain to me how they created the “fire” and “ice” realms the main had to conquer near the end, which told me he was definitely paying attention.
The next order of business was to eat a big “Linner” to hold us over to the next morning when we arrive in Florence.  Our target was the world-famous Hotel Saucher and the Café Saucher. 

Since this was our last chance for an Austrian meal, most of us order some traditional Austrian food from the menu.  The food was good, but not quite as good as I would have expected.  It also seemed that our server was very busy or ignoring us some of the time, which degraded the experience some.  We all saved some room, however, for desert, including a few slices of the Saucher Torte.  It was quite good by most accounts.  Most of us thought the “fruit” icing in the middle was just ok.  The non-sweetened whip cream it was served with, however, was a nice complement to the cake.  After another round of “find the waiter”, we were off again.

We had some time before the train left, so the group decided a leisurely stroll back to the train station that walks past a few more land marks was in order.

We found the house where Mozart was raised for most of his kid and adolescent years.  Becca decided to go in and take the tour of the house.  Noah and I took the time to walk around the little park, chase some pigeons, and tour around a few more blocks of the city.

Time to head back to the train station to catch our evening train to Munich, the Railjet 66 from Saltzburg to Munich.  Unfortuantely, the train was running about 10 minutes behind schedule, which meant we would only have 30 minutes in Munich to change trains, if the train held schedule.  Fortunately the train did hold schedule and it was a quick and comfortable trip.

The change over to the night train in Munich went very smoothly.  The crew is getting quite accustom to moving through a train station, dodging other people, finding the right train and car, and lugging the baggage on-board.  There was a brief stop at a pizza stand in the train station to get Noah a second dinner for the train.

On the train we arranged ourselves into the sleeper cars.  Noah was VERY excited because he go to travel on another sleeper car and he was on the top bunk.  Everyone settled in quickly and was all cheery to be having another rolling slumber party.  We also had a great steward on this train, who spoke great English and was very friendly. 

Now that we were 7, we reserved 1 whole 6 person sleeper car (3 bunks high on each side of the cabin), and one single bed in a near-by 6 person sleeper.  Of course, being the scariest of the crew, and least likely to be  messed with, I was the one bed in the other cabin with strangers.  Of course this wasn’t a big deal for me.

The cabin did have a interesting mix of people in it.  There was myself, and older German guy (bunk above me), and 2 ~20 year old Japanese girls who I think were afraid to come down from the top bunks.  During the middle of the night, we stopped at Innsbruck and picked up a 20’s German couple with big backpacks. 

After hanging out with the car-of-6-slumber-party for a while, everyone tucked themselves in and I retired to my bed and crashed.  I managed to catch some sleep even through I seemed to wake up at most stops and when the Innsbruck couple joined.
And on to Florence…

Day 17–Schonbrunn and the best of Wein (Vienna)

We started the day lazily, allowing everyone to rest and rejuvenate.  Showers, breakfast, and getting ready for the day.  We discussed a plan of attack for the day.  I convinced the troupes that it was worth the U-bahn trip and half a day to see Schloss Schönbrunn, so we settled on that for half the day, and some time in the afternoon to see something else.

After a short U-bahn ride and a 10 minute walk, we were at  Schönbrunn, the summer residence of the Habsburgs.  Judging from the looks of awe I saw, I believe I was correct in saying that we should go see it.  We settle package that included an audio tour of the palace apartments, the maze, and the Gloriette.

The palace apartment tour was pretty good, more interesting the many that I have been on.  Probably doesn’t hurt that there are many beautiful, rich, and ornate things to see, along with all of the interesting information about the Habsburgs.  Worth doing, even though the kids got kind of bored with it, except for the occasional oooh and ahh when we would go into some particularly ornate room.

Next up was a stroll through the palace gardens on way to the Gloriette at the far side of the property.  We enjoyed playing in one of the smaller side gardens before we hit the main open area behind Schönbrunn.  Everyone was stunned by the beauty of the place as we came out of the garden and could see the entire area behind the palace.  As you can imagine we took many photos of the place, which I will only share a few of the better ones here.

Once we finished with the garden area, we started the short hike up to the Gloriette.  While it was cooler than Budapest had been (high 80’s), it was still quite warm climbing up the hill in the sun.  The kids were starting to complain a little. 

Soon we arrived at the top of the hill and were greeted by yet another amazing view of Schonbrunn and Wien.  Our tickets allowed us to go to the top of the Gloriette, which was icing on the visual cake.  More pictures.

The walk back down was much more pleasant, partitally because it was easier, and partially because the kids had something to look forward to, the maze was next.

Before starting the maze we took a quick break and let the kids play at a cool little playground right next to the entrance to the maze.  There were several neat sets of play equipment, including one climb on thing that looking like a bird that you could even flap its wings.

Refreshed, into the maze we went.  Noah was very excited and lead us most of the way.  As we entered, most of us were just laid back, letting Noah have his fun.  However, after getting into several turn, backtrack, and such, we realized how well the maze worked. Simply having the hedge high enough to block your view was disorienting and “tunneled” enough to make to challenging to find your way.  It took us a good 15 minutes with efforts by most of the group at some point or other to get through the maze.  Noah was pretty proud. 

After finishing the maze, we took a little time to doing the labryinth, which was like a mini-maze with some obsticals.  There were stepping stones, Indiana Jones-style, with some of the booby trapped to shoot water at you when you stepped on them. There were several other interesting activities, like a mirror maze.
By this time, we had already spend an hour longer at Schonbrunn that we intended.  Probably a good sign for how much folks liked it.  However, there was more things to do and see, so back to the apartment to regroup.

Once there, the band of 7 parted ways for a few hours.  Jeanne went to some of the museums in the musem blocks.  Sara and I had a task to do, pack up some stuff and send it back home to lighten our load some.  And only 30 minutes to find and get to a post office.

Fortunately there was a post office less than 10 minutes from our apartment.  After finding a box in their store, we approached one of the counters.  A very nice, young clerk named Manuel helped us, including helping pack the box and work through all the shipping paperwork.  Since we are not expecting any really cold weather the rest of the trip, we shipped back some of the warming layers and other things we didn’t need (like the driving GPS system).  The box was 21 pounds!  It cost us $50 to send it slow route to the US, but want a relief it will be to have 21 less pounds to carry around.

After completing that errand, we picked up the kids and teens at the apartment and spend the rest of the afternoon walking around the pedestrian streets near Stephanplatz.  We walked along the extensive pedestrian streets filled with top-end shops, souvenir stores, and sidewalk cafes.  After meandering for a while, we ended up at the Wein Stadtsoper (state opera house), yet another beautiful building.  We went inside but could only go to the main stair case as there was a performance that evening.  It is pretty amazing that the opening performance for this opera house was Mozart performing Don Giovanni.

Time to head back to the apartment to rendezvous with Jeanne for dinner.  The dance of the choosing-the-dinner-location was performed again, resulting in a agreement to try out a brewpub followed by an after dinner walk around the ring.

A short walk later want we arrived at this hopping brewpub named 1516 Brew House.  The significance of 1516 is a tribute to the year when personal brewing of beer became legal in Vienna.  We were in heaven.  Microbrew, pub food, and laid back atmosphere was what we all needed.  Food was very good for the brewpub fair, having both American variations and some more traditional Viennese dishes.  I would guess that either an American owned the place, or the owner had some significant ties to America.  The only down side was we where in the upstairs, inside seating, which was pretty warm because of the heat. 

After getting out fill, we embarked on a walk around the ring, which is a street the circles part of Vienna and lined with many famous places.  It was about a half mile to get to the Hofburg palace, the main living establishment of the Habsburgs.  Since night had set, we could see the palace beautifully lit and stopped to take pictures and enjoy the cooler air that had settled in the city.  Across several parks we could see the Rathaus, but decided that was further than we cared to walk this evening, and headed back through more pedestrian walking areas to our apartment.

As we were approaching out apartment, with packing and rest on our minds, we hear some music and revelry in the apartment building across the street from ours.  We didn’t think much about it at the time.  We finished packing and put the kids to bed.  The whole time the revelry continued, which has now increased in volume some and can be heard through our open windows.  OK, it is now 11, guessing this should be done soon on a Wednesday night.  Around midnight it is time for Sara and I to turn in, except we are having a hard time falling a sleep to the sound of partying.  Fortunately, we did manage to fall asleep after not too long.  But wait, our party-going friends weren’t quite done.  Around 3AM we were awoken by a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday”.  Fortunately that was followed shortly by a bunch of people noisily talking in the streets on their way home.  FINALLY.