Vienna

After our week in Bratislava, we spent the weekend in Vienna, which is only a 45 minute drive away from Bratislava.  It was incredible.  What a beautiful city!  More than any other place I've visited, I think it's somewhere I could picture myself living.  I fell in love with it.  There was just something incredible about knowing Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Strauss, Schoenberg (and more!) walked these streets.  Vienna was a sort of musical mecca in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.  Even in the twentieth century.  (Heard of the Second Viennese School?)  Anyway, it was a special treat for me to be there.  My friend Briana did a study abroad there, so she gave us all the tips and tricks to the city, which helped so much.  One of my old professors, Dr. Holden, also gave me some ideas of what to see, which was so helpful.  Cam was super sweet all weekend and let me stay out while he took care of Andy during naps and even let me go to the opera one night.  All in all, a pretty great weekend.  The only downsides were Andy's tantrums and the weather.  Andy wasn't exactly on his best behavior.  We're definitely thinking twice before we schedule something else with him.  It was freezing cold.  And it's only October.  I shudder to think what January is like.

Anyway, what we did!  I apologize in advance for all the music history details.  I know most people don't care, but they're details about what we saw I don't want to forget!  We got there friday night about 6 and headed off to dinner.  We knew we had to try wiener schnitzel, since it comes from Vienna.  Our hotel directed us to a great restaurant that felt very authentic (everyone else was speaking German), and we had a great time.  It wasn't exactly the healthiest meal I've ever had, but it tasted pretty good! 

Cam with his winer schnitzel.

Saturday morning we headed out to see all the major sights in the city centre.  Our hotel was in the Museum Quarter, so we passed all the museums there, passed the Hofburg Palace, and made our way to see St. Stephens, the famous cathedral there.  Downtown Vienna is absolutely beautiful.  It might be the prettiest city centre I've been in.  Even Cameron said he didn't mind wandering around the shops because the area was so pretty-stunning architecture, fountains, etc.  We loved St. Stephen's.  When we went inside, there was a rehearsal going on for a concert that evening, so we got to hear parts of Haydn's Requiem.  It was gorgeous.  After that, we went to the Mozart House (where he lived from 1784-1787), and really enjoyed it.  We were lucky--they temporarily have Mozart's piano there!  Other than that, they don't have much many of his things, but it was cool to be in the place where he wrote some important works.  (The Marriage of Figaro, a few piano concertos, etc.)  After that, Cam took Andy back for a nap while I headed to the Schoenberg Center.  I got there, and it was closed. Only open Monday-Friday.  What kind of museum closes on Saturday?  I was bummed.  Once Andy woke up, we headed out to Central Cemetery on the outskirts of Vienna where so many famous composers are buried.  What an incredible experience.  I guess we looked lost when we got there (it's a HUGE cemetery and we weren't sure where we'd find the graves we were looking for), because a sweet german man came up and asked if we needed help finding something.  He became our tour guide and took us all over showing us some famous graves.  It was cool, because he showed us some we never would have found otherwise.  That night, I headed to the opera.  I got a standing room ticket for 3 euros (!!!) and saw, "The Barber of Seville."  Comic opera isn't exactly my thing (some day I will see "Tristan and Isolde"), but I still loved the overall experience.  It's one of the most important opera houses in the world and is beautiful.  I ended up with a pretty good "seat" considering how late I got there, so that was lucky.  Cam caught up on "Revenge" episodes while I was gone, so the evening wasn't a total loss for him.  

Kunsthistor Museum

Hofburg Palace

More Hofburg

Downtown Vienna 

St. Stephens Cathedral

St. Stephens from the front.

Brahms 

Beethoven 

Schubert

A memorial to Mozart: he's likely buried in an unmarked grave, not too far away. 

A church in the cemetery.  I'm walking with our "tour guide."   

Schoenberg's Grave.  It has 12 points! (google "12 tone row" if you're confused.) 

Czerny.  One we wouldn't have found without our tour guide. 

Our nice tour guide.

At the Staatsoper opera house.  

Sunday morning we headed to Schoenbrunn Palace.  We almost didn't go; we're so glad we did.  It was beautiful.  Especially the gardens.  If it wouldn't have been so cold, we would have loved wandering in them longer.  Mozart has a great history at Schoenbrunn.  In 1762, Mozart passed through Vienna during his first concert tour at age 6 and performed for the Empress Maria Theresa in the Hall of Mirrors.  Later, Schoenbrunn was where he and Saliera (his big rival) had their big music contest in the Orangery.  After that, we made our way to the Haydn House, where Haydn lived for the last 12 years of his life (he died there!) after semi-retiring from being the Kapellmeister for the Esterhazy family in Eisenstadt.  It was definitely my favorite composer house we visited.  It had so many of his things. He wrote "The Creation" and "The Seasons" while living there.  He also wrote his last nine string quartets there.  The house has his pianoforte and his clavichord, which he kept in his bedroom.  Haydn had a lot of important visitors while he lived there, like Mozart and Haydn. Andy behaved very well (complete sarcasm) and even managed to pull the plastic cover off Haydn's clavichord and play it.  The museum employee laughed instead of yelling at us, so that was a nice change.  At least we know the clavichord still works, right?  The house had a Brahms room, which I really enjoyed.  Haydn was one of Brahms' heroes, so it was fitting.  (There are no existing Brahms apartments still around in Vienna. Sad, because he's one of my favorites.)  During Andy's nap, I headed out to a Beethoven apartment.  There are three you can see in Vienna, but I ended up choosing the Pasqualati House.  Beethoven lived in Vienna for 35 years, eight of which were spent in this apartment, off and on.  His 4th, 5th, 7th, and 8th symphonies were composed while living there.  They had Beethoven's piano, which was amazing.  Other than that, there wasn't much there, but I still loved it.  I was the only one there, so that was pretty special for me.  After Andy's nap, we headed to the airport for our flight home.  We didn't spend much time in Vienna, less than 48 hours, but I loved every second of it.  Especially since Cam took Andy duty most of the time.  Thank you, Cameron! 

Schoenbrunn Palace  

Prettiest gardens ever.

In front of Haydn House.

Haydn's Clavichord in his bedroom.  (The one Andy ensured is still working.) Those are a bunch of canons he refused to publish that hung on the walls of his bedroom.  

Haydn's Piano.  He used to sit and improvise at this piano in the mornings until he came up with something he liked, then he'd score it out in the afternoon.

Beethoven's Pasqualati House.  He lived on the top floor.  

Beethoven's Piano.  Look at all the pedals! 

Andy sporting his new shoes we bought in Vienna.  We caved and made an impulse buy because we were sick of him tearing his velcro shoes off all the time.  Best purchase ever. 

Walking the airport terminal, waiting for our flight.  Best airport ever.  They have a security line just for young families and wheelchairs!

Bratislava, Slovakia

We spent most of last week in Bratislava.  Cam had to go for work (Bratislava is Dell's europe hub), so Andy and I tagged along.  We got back from Paris on a sunday night and then headed out to Bratislava monday night.  It was no small feat to get out the door on time considering we had four loads of laundry to do and each load takes 4+ hours.  We literally finished the last load 20 minutes before we had to leave. But we made it! Flying on a decent airline (klm) was a dream compared to our last several easyjet experiences.  They were just so...nice.  Andy was really good.  We were bracing ourselves for the worst because he refused to take his afternoon nap and we weren't getting to our hotel until 11:30 PM or so, but it couldn't have gone better.  He slept most of the flight, most of our taxi ride from Vienna to Bratislava, and stayed asleep while we carried him from the car to the hotel room.  Amazing, right?

Andy and I didn't see much of Cameron during the week because of a lot of events and work, but we had a lot of fun, just the two of us. Tuesday, we spent a lot of time in old town, which is really quaint and beautiful. Our hotel happened to be next to a little playground where we spent a lot of time, both tuesday and every other day.  It was nice to be staying somewhere Andy could run around a little better! A bunch of pictures of old town:

Slovak National Theater

St. Michael's Gate 

More Saint Michael's Gate

Main Square

They had these cute markets around old town.  I liked all the lace they sold.

President's Palace

I'm not sure why this is so famous?  Everyone was always taking pictures of it.

St. Martin's Cathedral

Bratislava Castle

Wednesday, we went to the zoo, thanks to a tip from my friend Allison who used to live in Bratislava.  I'll be honest--I wasn't expecting much.  Especially when I got to the entrance and they only charged 3.50 to get in.  And there were only three cars there.  I thought there might be a few goats and chickens...stuff like that.  Wrong!  Pretty much the coolest zoo ever!  They had so many animals I hadn't seen in person before.  My favorites were the lions, the leopards, and the white tigers.  Andy's favorites were the wild cat and the monkeys.   We headed back into old town after Andy's nap to get hummus and pita at a lebanese place Allison recommended, which was delicious.  It was a pretty good day, but it didn't have the best ending.  I got lost and headed the completely wrong direction right before sunset and by the time I realized where I was, I was a good 45 minute walk away from the hotel.  I was panicked because I didn't want to be out by myself after dark.  But...we survived! :)

Most beautiful lion ever.  Stunning. And it was so close!

Isn't it a pretty zoo?  There were animal exhibits on both sides of this road. We had it all to ourselves.

Thursday morning we took the bus out to Devin Castle.  It's just about 30 minutes away from Bratislava and was amazing!  The castle itself is beautiful, but my favorite was the view.  Especially with all the fall colors everywhere.  It was a little bit of a hike, but definitely worth it.  Thursday afternoon I took Andy to this really fun play room that was inside of a toy store right by our hotel.  You just pay 2 euros to go in for an hour (it's not babysitting--moms go in, too) and they have all these cool toys for the kids to play with.  Andy loved being around all the other little kids, too.  I wish we had something like this in Amsterdam!  That night, we went out to dinner with a few of Cam's work friends.  It was so fun to meet them, and the ribs were incredible!

Devin Castle from the parking lot.

Gorgeous! 

The Danube. 

At dinner.  It was fun to see Elizabeth and Laura--they're both FDPs living in Bratislava right now.  Evidently, Andy was having a great time. 

Friday morning, Andy and I headed back to the playroom.  Afterwards, we headed up to a lookout point/monument called Slavin.  Yes, the view was beautiful.  Getting there...was a different story.  The way the hotel told me to get there included stairs for about 20 minutes.  Yes, I had the stroller with me, so, I had to carry Andy AND the stroller all the way up.  (Just wait til you see the view in the pictures--we got that high purely from stairs.  No hills or anything.)  I was shaking and dripping in sweat by the time we got to the top.  Was it worth it?  NO.  Why didn't I just quit on the way up?  No idea.  After Slavin, we spent a couple hours more in old town until we met Cameron at 5 to leave for Vienna.

Cute Andy in the playroom.

At the top of the horrible stairs.  I wish you could see the stairs all the way to the bottom so I could really get some sympathy.

The view from Slavin.

The hard points of the week:
-Navigating a foreign city all by myself and trying to figure out the bus system and tram system.  There was one time I didn't know how to tell the bus driver to stop at the next stop, so we ended up going too far, having to figure out how to get back, etc.  It was a party.
-Getting lost!  I know I already mentioned wednesday's episode.  Sadly, there were more.  I'm going to blame this on the horrible map the hotel gave me instead of my navigation skills.
-Trying to figure out what to feed Andy.  Tacky, I know, but I started shoving sandwich meat into my purse at breakfast so I'd have something to feed Andy for lunch.  
-Andy throwing food everywhere at the fancy hotel breakfast.  This happened every day and was very embarrassing.

The good points: 
-Milka chocolate and McDonald's sundaes.  Both of which I had plenty of.
-Everything was super cheap!
-The nice, albeit chilly, walk along the Danube to get to our hotel.
-How much Andy got to play in the playground.
-Our super nice hotel.  Best breakfast ever. And they even had a driver to take us around to a few different locations around the city.  And other than the poor directions to Slavin, they always gave me excellent directions and were very helpful.
-Andy loved the bath in the hotel.  It had an extra little nozzle that he found especially entertaining.  I loved that you could just set the temperature digitally. Who knew such a thing existed?
-The bed in our hotel had separate comforters for Cam and me.  This was amazing.  We've decided we're going to have our own covers from now on.
-People spoke more english than I thought they would.  I could almost always find someone who I could communicate with.
-It was so nice to visit somewhere that isn't touristy!
-Even though it was hard being alone with Andy, it was nice to have a change of pace and be somewhere new.  It gave us more motivation to explore and fill our days.  We're so glad we got to visit!

To complete this post, an adorable picture of Andy in the tub: