Wednesday, Vienna

We decided to spend the day at Schloss Schonbrunn. This was the summer residence of Empress Maria Teresa, and later Emperor Franz Josef and wife Elizabeth (Sisi). The grounds are enormous too. Big enough for a zoo and orangerie! We took the audio tour of the palace. We got the tour upgrade and saw 40 rooms versus the standard that was on 26 rooms. The price difference was totally worth it. It's so hard to comprehend the sheer opulence of the place. I had two favorite rooms: the first was pale yellow with blue and white sketches done by the royal family. The other one was pink with roses everywhere. I would totally have both of these rooms in MY palace. After the tour we went out to explore the gardens. Unfortunately, we started getting rained on and had to cut our exploration short. We walked back to our hotel and chilled (napped) for a little while. We took the train into the center of Vienna where we had dinner reservations at Figlmullers. Figlmullers is famous for Weinerschnitzel. It's bigger than the plate it comes on! Sonja and I had the schnitzel, and Mom had Goulash. The service was fantastic, the food was hot and delicious, and we thoroughly enjoyed our dinner there! After dinner we were prepared to do some walking around Stephensplatz. Five minutes into our walk, the clouds opened and it rained. And rained. And then rained some more. We were lucky to find a covered pedestrian area to wait out the downpour. I bet we waited 20 minutes! Finally it let up enough for us to hustle back to the train station and our hotel. We had a really great day despite the rain.