We began the day by packing up our London apartment and heading to the train station to catch the Heathrow Express in order to fly to Vienna. Dan was very smart in his apartment location choice so that we would only have a 10 minute walk to Paddington Train Station from our flat. And, yes, swimming backpacks can double as luggage, in case you were wondering.
As we were leaving London, I had time to reflect on a few things.
- Londoners dress for Winter year round, apparently. The temperature ranged from about 60 to 70 degrees each day. While I admit that is a little more chilly than we are used to in Summer, we still wore our shorts and sundresses. At home, the flip flops and shorts come out as soon as the temperature breaks 50 degrees. Londoners do not share the same clothing preferences. Women wore opaque tights every day. People walked around town in puffy (down) coats. I even saw children on the playground with fleece jackets covered by puffy (down) vests. Needless to say, we stood out quite a bit.
- Dan has quite a bit of "suit envy" after seeing the smart cuts of men's suits each day. The really smart suits have a ticket pocket above one of the outside coat pockets. Alas, a new suit wasn't in the budget or in the available luggage space.
- London is such a global city. I didn't remember that from my previous trip here, because I was in my "early 20s bubble" at that point in my life. It was so nice to see such a diverse culture of global groups all coexisting peaceably, regardless of their ethnicity or religion.
Back to the trip...Our flight to Vienna went smoothly. When we landed, the heat hit us like a ton of bricks. Man, was it unexpectedly hot in Vienna! It was in the mid to upper 90s each day, which is quite unusual. We checked into our hotel, which was filled with cutting edge modern art displays. That should have given us a clue as to what we would find in our room...We had a small sitting room in addition to the bedroom, which was supposed to have seating and a dining table with chairs. We thought that would be convenient so that the kids could have breakfast in the room each morning. Instead, our room was selected as the modern art exhibit room of the 7th floor. This was the seating area...
Beautiful? Yes. Functional? Not quite. It reminded Dan and me of the old SNL skit called "Sprockets with Dieter"starring Mike Myers. We made quite a few "Sprockets" references and did the little Sprockets dance over the next three days. We made it work for us and got a good laugh in the process. Hadley and Jack played "Taco Bell" in the tall chairs, so they had fun.
After getting settled in, we decided to wander around a bit and find a place for an early dinner. The Academy of Fine Arts was right behind our hotel. It is the art school to which Adolf Hitler applied and was rejected so famously, many years ago. We found our way to the Naschmarkt, an open air market with lots of great food stalls. We chose a traditional Austrian dinner.
The kids loved the wiener schnitzel! Dan and I loved the sauerkraut. It was the best I had ever tasted. After the meal, we said, "What if that was the Applebee's of Vienna? What if that was just mediocre food?" We were able to find better wiener schnitzel the next several days, but nothing could top that sauerkraut!
On the walk back to the hotel, we passed the Vienna Opera House. It was such a beautiful building that we had to take a picture.
We ended the day with a swim in the hotel pool. It was definitely our kids' favorite part of the day, which is always the case when a hotel has a pool. You would think they hadn't been in a pool in 6 months...
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