September 10, 2013

Today was another great day in Vienna! This morning, my dad and I went to the outskirts of the city, about a 15 minute drive from the old part of the city. This is where the Schonbrunn palace is; the summer home for many years of Ferdinand and Eleanor Gonzaga and their family. We did a forty-five minute walking tour through the upstairs royal apartment. The palace has 1200 rooms in it and during the time that the royal family lived there, there were 1000 other people (mostly servants and family) living there too. The Schonbrunn palace is from the fifteen hundreds but a lot of it was destroyed in WWII, so the renovations and restoration was finally finished in the 60's. Although the palace was damaged and restored, it still looks like it is in perfect condition and still untouched from the fifteen hundreds. The summer "small" palace is known for its beautiful grounds and gardens. These gardens go on for miles and everything is kept perfectly as if it were a little backyard garden. There were fountains and hills and flowers and trees and everything was perfectly symmetrical.

In the afternoon, my dad and I went on a walking tour of the old neighborhood of Vienna. It is called the first district. The tour was about an hour and a half and the tour guide gave the tour in English (for us) and German (for the five others on the tour). We saw the old city walls, the famous old city Vienna church for the Royal family, the Ferdinand family regular, city palace, the parliament building, and the riding stables for the famous Spanish Lipizon horses. The tour was great and it the city is absolutely beautiful. After the walking tour, my dad and I went to get a late, light lunch at the famous and oldest coffee house in Vienna. My dad got the spicy sausage, which they were known for, and it was interesting! When his plate came, there were two long, skinny sausages laying in front of him, wrapped around the plate, with a pile of mustard and horseradish in the middle. EEEWWW! Anyways, we decided to spend the rest of the day walking around the city and getting lost. We figured that we probably walked about eight or nine miles all together throughout the day. Another long and awesome day in Vienna!