Vienna

From Prague we caught a train to Vienna, where we would spend 4 days, including New Years Eve.

We arrived in Vienna and stayed near Westbahnhof - about 2.5 km from the centre of the old town (St Stephens, above, is pretty much the centre.) It was a city that we loved visiting!

Here we are outside St Stephen's after visiting the Catacombs beneath the Church (and the square). Lots of bones and tombs for the boys to look at, they were fascinated.
Here are the boys on the famous 'giant wheel' of Vienna. Look closely at Cameron's hands, it's Dad's camera again! The Giant wheel was destroyed in the war and rebuilt, and is one of the iconic 'things to do' in Vienna. Working on the age-old formula of buy-a-photo and exit-through-the-gift-shop, it seems quite successful! We had a great ride, looking all around, and the boys were a bit sad that the neighboring fun-park in the Volkspraeter was closed for the Winter. The weather was reasonably clear, and we could see from the mountains to the new centre and the old town. Here was a spinning globe outside the planetarium. To see Europe, head up on the platform behind. To see down under, you had to head, well, down under! One of our many tours by foot took us to this park - lots of fun dashing about in the snow, chasing the poor ducks and pigeons, running on the iced over lake (only after we saw lots of others doing it)Johann Strauss monument.  From the Volkspraeter Wheel, we wandered through the Volkspark and crossed the canal heading back into town. A couple of happy boys after dashing around the park, jumping on the big chunks of snow left on the sides of the paths from the snow-sweeping trucks. This is the 'HundertwasserWein' - a building designed by the famous artist/architect Hundertwasser. The boys thought it was fabulous and wanted to go and see the Hundertwasser museum nearby. Here they are below on the stairs in the courtyard of the museum, with a few typical Hundertwasser features. The boys loved the exhibition, and think they can draw some pictures in 'Hundertwasser style'! Here are the boys at the Shoenbrunn Schloss. They were amazed at the size of the gardens, and were really interested little tourists inside. They asked lots of 'interesting' questions and discovered some interesting facts. For example "If there were 15 children, why are there only 11 in that picture?" and "Why do they all have the same face?", and by the end, the whole tour group had adopted them, and asked them lots of question about where they lived and other things. We set ourselves the task of using public transport to get to an attraction in the Vienna woods that we thought the boys would love, The SeeGrotte, the biggest underground lake in Europe. It was a gypsum mine until 20 million litres of water flooded it, and it is now a lake! In WWII, the fusilage of the Hienkel 162 (one of the first jet planes) was assembled in here. It was deep underground and the Allies couldn't bomb that deep. The fuselages were shipped to Wien airport and put together there. Below is a sign showing the dimensions of the Seegrotte.

One of the many dark caves on the huge underground lake. We walked into the mine, and had a boat tour. Really interesting stuff! It was only us, and a young Italian couple on the tour. It was warmer underground (constant 9 degrees) than the -5 above ground! Here are the boys in the entrance tunnel - everything went in and out through here - the mine trucks and also the plane fuselages! The kids were about the right height to work in here. We also visited the Butterfly House at the Hofburg Schloss - the kids loved it! It was a great place to remove hats gloves jackets and scarves and get warm after walking in the snow! Once again, I had no control over the camera, with both boys having a turn to tour the Butterfly house and capture things from their point of view. Overall Vienna was great. We were there for New Years Eve, but the boys were so tired from all the walking and touring that they 'crashed' by 9pm. At midnight, all of the fireworks sounded like a mixture of small arms fire and larger mortars and rockets.  Some colourful fireworks in the sky, but the Viennese seemed to favour throwing crackers at each other, similar to last years experience with the Germans at the Ostsee.  We caught the plane back from Vienna and are now planning our next trips. Happy New Year.