And New Year’s in Vienna

After our Christmas in London, we all packed up and on the 27th headed to Vienna where we stayed until the 1st. Vienna is a charming, beautiful city. It was cold of course, although no snow. And their Christmas markets were still up which was a treat. We had two Airbnb’s within a 10 minute walk of each other, just slightly outside of the city center. 

In a nutshell, here’s what we did:

• Explored the city center
• Walked around the Hofburg Palace
• Enjoyed warming up with hot chocolate and treats in little cafes
• Visited the Haus der Musik, an interactive sound museum. The highlight was a room where you could actually conduct an orchestra. The kids loved this.
• Went to mass at the beautiful Kirche St. Peter
• Caught a bit of the opera (Hansel & Gretel) which was being projected on a big screen outside the Opera house
• Ice skating near city hall
• Ring tour via the city tram
• And for NYE, Julie and family made an amazing dinner and later that night at midnight when the kids were already asleep, we enjoyed one of the best fireworks shows from our apartment window.

We really enjoyed ourselves although Elaine gave us a run for our money when it came to sleep. For about 3 nights in a row, she woke around 1am and was up for a good 2-3 hours. We eventually decided that she was probably over stimulated with all of the activities with her cousins and sister around. Of course it took us a couple of extremely sleep deprived nights to figure this out before we made any changes.

But all in all we still had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed Vienna.