Green Street: Gruss Gott: Our Final Weeks

We are wrapping up our time here in Vienna and slowly getting ready to leave at the end of this month. Ahh, it's going to be so hard. We are now accustomed to living in Vienna, with the museums, concerts, shopping, easy transportation (U-bahn and straßebahn), a great school, and the numerous playgrounds! Top it off with great food and wine, friendly people and a few close friends and you've got a recipe for staying. But that's not in our cards. And so we've been packing in as much as possible. This is what we've been up to....

Luke and mommy went to Schönbrunn Palace to see a marionette production of Mozart's opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). It was shortened down to an hour, to accommodate a child's attention span. And it was great! In addition to the music and the story, the marionettes (and their handlers) were unbelievable. We loved it.

And here's Luke, waiting for the second act to begin.

The next day, we decided to walk into the innerstadt for ice cream at Vienna's most famous eis (ice cream) salon. While we were strolling along eating, we noticed a carousel set up in Stephansplatz. So Luke got a ride on a mermaid/horse thing. Ice cream and an amusement ride, Luke was in heaven.

In the spring, there a number of bank holidays here. So on one of them we took the train with some good friends to visit to Baden, an old resort/spa town for the rich people of Vienna back in the 18th century. It's a 45 minute straßebahn ride south of Vienna. It's a beautiful little town with great architecture and gardens.

Here are daddy and Elizabeth at the entrance to one of the gardens (sorry, it's a little washed out).

Here is one of those rare instances where Luke wasn't on his scooter (or "roller" as they're called here). He abandoned it briefly to ride on a seesaw.

Horst and Elizabeth, good family friends and natives of Vienna, came with us to Baden.

Luke was begging to climb up on this statue. He had to settle for this pose instead.

In the largest garden, you can rent row boats and see the garden in style. We were tempted but with Luke and Kevin horsing around we may have capsized.

At the end of our day, we went to a heuriger. This is a really unique experience. A heuriger is a small restaurant (usually serving just cold food) that is connected to a vineyard and offers only it's own wines. And you eat on the grounds ... usually in the yard of the owners. A heuriger isn't strictly a restaurant (they have a different license) and they operate intermittently, for maybe a week or two per month. Here we are with Horst and Elisabeth, as our food was just arriving.