Visit to Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna, Austria

Vienna, Austria - Day 2 - Our Visit to Schonbrunn Palace

We were up early and ready for another day of sightseeing in Vienna.

Last night we left the public concert around 10:pm and took the subway back to Praterstern
Station – the station that was just a stone throw away from our hotel - Hotel Kunsthof.

But because we got back when it was dark it took us a little while before we could find it.

We decided to have the buffet breakfast offered at the hotel, at 13 Euro per person. It was a nice spread with fruit salad,  different types of cereals to which you could add 2 types of yogurt, a variety of  dried fruits,  seeds, plus a good assortments of cheese, cold meats, fresh bread as well as hot food items with eggs, sausages and bacon.

We Enjoyed our Vienna Breakfast in this Lovely Garden

Stan and I are not big meat eaters, especially not sausages. But the sausages here were quite good and they were not as fattening and salty as what we were usually served in North America.

We had our breakfast in the tranquil garden surrounded by wall climbing vines covering the three sides of the walls. 

There are two optical illusions in our hotel dining room. Can you find them?

We just love travelling on our own taking the time to enjoy  and observe the little things rather than with a tour group when you have to be rush here ad there, often up at 6am and run around all day until late at night.

Stan did a really good job booking this hotel with such a nice surrounding,  close to the old town without breaking our bank.

This morning we did book a city tour which included a visit to the Schonbrun  Palace where the Austrian Empress Maria Teresa and her11 children lived during her reign.

he tour company sent a van and picked us up right at 10a.m. on the dot ( This was our second experience with the Germans’ precise timing. Our first one was with the Lufthansa’s connecting flight from Frankfurt to Vienna with the flight leaving exactly at the time it was supposed to, not a minute late. Wow! )

The tour bus gathered more tourists along the way and we were transferred to a double decker bus at the company’s bus depot. 

We booked an English tour but it turned out that it was bilingual with the tour guide speaking both in German and English to each respective group of tourists. Poor lady, she spoke non stop for three hours without a break.

The city tour cost 39 Euro each but frankly, we could have done it on our own since the transportation system was quite efficient in Vienna. 

The bus took us to the famous Ring Road  whose city walls used to separate the royal families from their citizens but were later completely demolished allowing the public to enter and visit the palace and other grand buildings.

 Stan and I already walked around and visited there yesterday . 

Schonbrun Place, Vienna

 We did a better job ourselves exploring most of the grand buildings as we had more time to do it leisurely on our own whereas with the bus tour, it just drove passed these buildings without any stop at all.

After a drive through the Ring Road, the bus tour took us to the famous Schonrunn Palace where the well known  musician Andree has put on a number of grand concerts and broadcasted to  North American audiences. I was glad that we got to visit this famous palace. 

Since Stan and I visited Versailles in France a few years ago, this palace reminded us of that palace in many ways:

- the huge fountain,
- the numerous white statues lining both sides of the symmetrically design formal garden
- the century old trees that formed a shaded archway
- a hunting ground for the royals etc,
The design was strikingly similar to the design of the garden in Versailles.

It was difficult to say who copied who in the design of this royal residence.  We were given just 20 minutes in the royal garden to roam free our own.   During our tour, we picked up tidbits of interesting historical facts such as Napoleon  was a guest at this palace and we were shown the bed where he slept on, surprisingly a short and narrow one indeed.

Garden of Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna

There were  numerous spacious rooms in the palace, but when it came to sleeping comfort, these beds were small in scale in comparison to the size of the palace except for the ceremonial bed of the royal couple.

 We also learned that Maria Antoinette was one of the 16 children ( unfortunately, a few of them died of childhood diseases, so there were 11) of empress Maria Teresa.

After the tour, it was about 1:30pm and by then  the temperature must have reached more than 40 degrees as the heat was absolutely unbearable.

Everyone became sluggish and many people, including us, took refuge in the shade under the trees.

We just sat on a bench in one of the many parks in the city and waited for the sun to go down before we dare to move at all. 

We had dinner at one of the sidewalk cafes.

 I needed some distilled water for my breathing machine and went to the pharmacy store to get some. But the pharmacists working there did not understand the English  term distilled water.  Stan came to the rescue with his German - Distilled? wasser. Bingo.

The pharmacist's eyes lit up, dispensed 1 litre of distilled water in a brown coloured glass bottle, slapped a label on it and charged me 16. 50 Euro for a litre of distilled water! (  In Canada, that same bottle of distilled water only cost me  U.S $1.50!)  I must think of a way to bring distilled water with me in my travel next time.

Went to bed early with my breathing machine and slept like a baby!

  
R.T.,Vienna, Austria
Aug. 5, 2012