July 18, 2015

After several weeks of visiting ruins, churches and museums, we decided to make Vienna a “kid’s trip” for Hayden.  We found a great brochure at our campsite that listed the top things to do in Vienna for families.  He picked the Aquarium for his first choice and we also wanted to get to the palace where they have a children’s section and also a hedge maze to go through.

We hit the Aquarium first because that was what Hayden was the most excited about.  I have to say, it was actually a really cool aquarium!  They had lots of different fish and also had an open room with free-flying birds, monkeys, turtles, a crocodile and lots of fish.  It was really neat and the birds were awesome.  Hayden really enjoyed it, so we were happy!  The aquarium had lots of things that we hadn’t seen before, so it was fun to see all of the new fish.

After the aquarium, we walked through town for a while and found the Imperial Treasury.  Wow, talk about some serious jewelry!!  The museum had the Austrian crown jewels along with lots of artifacts/clothing from the past kings/queens through the countries history.  We have decided that it would definitely be nice to be royal.  🙂

We made it a short day and went back to the campsite to hang out and get to bed a little early.  The next morning, we made our way to Schonbrunn Palace where we got the kids family pass for the day.  We went through the palace gardens and out into the hedge maze that they have set up.  We didn’t do great at the maze, but at least we found our way out!  They also had a really cool playground where we spent a while watching Hayden run around.  After being outside for a while, it was starting to get pretty toasty, so we went to tour the inside parts of the palace.  They have kept the children’s rooms in the same shape as when the princes/princesses lived here, so Hayden got to play with the toys and see the rooms all set up.  They certainly had a nice place!  Inside of the kid’s room, they have a ton of “royal clothes” for dressing up.  The best part was that they even had adult sizes, so Hayden and Adam both got to dress up.  I especially like Adam with the long hair!  lol  We also toured the adult portion of the rooms which were very interesting as well.

We spent another couple of hours walking around town where we saw some great architecture and had some Schnitzel for lunch.

We probably could have spent another couple of days here, but it’s time to move on to Prague and work our way up to Germany!