Schönbrunn Park

In the morning before going to Massenet's Werther at the Vienna Staatsoper, Jess, John and I went to Schönbrunn to wander the grounds. We started in some of the manicured wooded areas, headed back to the Palmenhaus and Tieregarten portion (although we didn't have time for the Zoo) and hiked up the hill to the Gloriette before wandering down the more natural woods on the other side. John and I also found a Würst stand near a gate to the park, where he tried his first Käsekrainer, which are a kind of wurst filled with cheese and quite possibly the best thing on the planet. By the time we were finished we were freezing, because in spite of the sun and supposed 50 degree temperature, we underdressed and were quite chilled. We headed back to Dürergasse for a nap and a break before standing through the opera!

Jess and John in front of Schönbrunn

A view of the Palmenhaus and some of the gardens

Green things in Winter!!!

Schönbrunn's Neptune Fountain

Schönbrunn

Hey, I put some new shoes on!

This morning was homework morning. To compensate for shopping afternoon. Abby and I met at Cafe Sperl, my local Viennese cafe, for an expensive but amazing traditional breakfast with incredible Viennese coffee and proceeded to hang out, drink more coffee, and finish up some homework for the next few hours.


Come lunchtime, we headed back to my place to grab a quick and much cheaper bite to eat, before walking up to Mariahilferstraße. We were on the hunt for Abby's perfect peacoat: warm, good lines, easy to wear with scarfs and blue. We walked the entirety of Mariahilf, at least all the parts worth hitting, before coming up the last mall at the very end. We went inside, partially just to get warm, and ran into a tiny store that was going out of business and was clearly in its last day or two from the lack of merchandise. We found a practically perfect blue peacoat at the front of the store, but of the two left, neither were in her size. Then I spotted the few left over pairs of shoes in the back of the store and headed straight there. Along the way missing the rack full of those blue pea coats, which luckily Abby did not miss. Both of us ended up winning, with Abby finding out this dream coat was only 25 Euro! And me finding a great pair of black high heeled ankle boots for 15 Euro!


And the day only got better from there, as we headed off to Schönbrunn for the opening day of their Weihnachtsmarkt! Probably my favorite of the three I've gone too so far, the Schönbrunn Christmas market was less crowded, more organized and had more homemade goods: all in all less touristy. We enjoyed some Nockerl the Austrian version of Spätzle, Krapfen an Austrian donut which was fried and filled in front of our eyes, Punsch and Glühwein!

Sunrise at Schönbrunn!

I woke up at 6:00am to a phone call from Zan, who was letting me know he was almost to my place. Why 6am? Because we were heading to Schönbrunn palace, the former summer home of the Habsburg family, to watch the sunrise! Abe and I had planned to do this Friday, but he wimped out, so we did it Saturday instead. I made hot chocolate for the cold morning, which we transported in regular mugs because it's all we have, and we went and hopped on the U-Bahn.

We got to Schönbrunn shortly after and I hoped to God the place was open, which it was, but every closed gate we passed, Abe made some snide pessimistic comment. We got to the main gate which was open and went searching for the entrance to the gardens. We had about 20 minutes to sunrise and could not find a direct route, but eventually got into the gardens and started heading toward the hill, where we planned to watch the sunrise.

Of course, at 12:30 the night before when we made plans to do this, none of us thought to check the weather, so it was cloudy and we all knew we weren't really going to see much. But once we reached the top of the hill, we settled onto some benches and watched as the city of Vienna got slightly brighter and the street lights started going off.