The Imperial City

We're in the small village of Lauterbrunnen, high up in the Lauterbrunnen Valley.  It's the country, so everything there is to do is to be done outside.  And it rained all night, and, according to weather.com for Interlaken (which is the nearest town on weather.com -- Lauterbrunnen doesn't exist according to the site), it's supposed to rain all day.  It's going to be a quiet day.  Which does give me the chance to let the girls sleep in and for me to catch up on the blog.

So, now I must go back in time to write up our last half day in Vienna, before heading to Melk (see earlier blog postings).  The hotel in Vienna allowed us a 1pm checkout of one room, so before heading out, we put all of our bags in the girls' room and then headed to the U-bahn.

Once we figured out the ticket machine, the U-bahn (subway) was incredibly easy to use.  After changing trains in Karlsplatz, it was six stops to our goal of Schonnbrunn Schloss (Palace).  Originally planned to be greater than Versailles, it was scaled back when budgetary considerations took over.  Still, it has 1400 rooms and grand gardens -- so it is not like they went from grand to weak. 

Our combo tickets from the previous not only saved us a significant amount of money, they allowed us to skip the lengthy ticket line, and cut to the front of admissions line.  It's like a Disney Fast Past, only Disney hasn't designed anything this over the top.

The audioguides come with the price of admission again.  Very brilliant design and execution.  Each time you see a number in a room indicating a new display, you punch in the number, hit go, and the hold the device up to your ear and listen.  Even Torie decided to use the audioguide at the Palace. 

The self-guided tour covered approximately 41 rooms, so it was long enough to be interesting, but not so long as to turn boring.  A world UNESCO site, it really is a stunning place.  It was used primarily as the "Summer Palace" for the Hapsburgs.  The amount of money and staff it took to support the Hapsburgs is amazing.  One interesting point -- they preferred to use marriage, not war, as a means of expanding their empire.  It worked too, although the side effect of in-breeding and genetic risk ended up weakening the brand.  The palace was primarily built up by Empress Maria Theresa, but was also used by Franz Joseph and Sisi, so it gave them another chance to tell the same story.

After the tour, we went out into the back gardens, which were quite impressive.  We wandered around, past the Schonbrunn fountain and the fake Roman Ruins built in the 1700s as a horticultural  feature.  We came to the main fountain (Neptune), which is quite grand.  We tried to find the maze, the job of which was a maze itself.  We found it, but with the pressure of 1pm coming, decided to skip it for the walk up the hill to the Gloriette, an amazing structure high on a hill behind the Palace.  It provided amazing views back into Vienna.

The trip back on the U-bahn was simple.  Julia, Torie and I picked up sandwiches for lunch -- which we all ate in the hotel room after Carol and Maddy got a new suitcase for Maddy (the one she started the trip with fell apart).  While we did not walk as much as usual this day, walking to and from the Palace, coupled with the gardens, and then the later walk to Hertz, we still covered a decent amount of ground.