Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Day 62 – Schonbrunn Palace – Maria Theresa, Magic Tree house

We awoke late and headed down for some breakfast at the hotel. It was a buffet, similar to how I remember it from HS but not as nice as Pension Herbert. After breakfast, we headed to Schonbrunn Palace, #18 in the castles & palaces. Since we missed our return time for the car, we decided to drive it since we were going to get charged anyway.

We took a guided tour of the palace. We got to see 40 of the palace rooms. What I did not realize (or remember) is that Maria Theresa, who built the palace, was the mother of Marie Antoinette. Instead of fighting wars, the Austrians found that marrying into the families who had a lot of power was a better way to stay on a countries good side. Maria Theresa had 16 kids, and all of the daughters were married to key people in other countries except the favorite daughter who was allowed to marry for love. As we were touring around, I was reminded of a book that the girls and I read about Mozart. It is one of the books in the Magic Tree House series. I was able to point out that the similarities of the book, which we will have to read again when we get back.

After the palace, we went to a children’s museum, attached to the palace. In the courtyard of the museum, there were costumes similar to what the kids would have worn. The girls tried on some costumes. I even dressed up. We got quite a few pictures in there before we headed into the museum. We were doing dress up for about 30 minutes, and the museum for about 20. We learned about the last empress to live at the Palace and what her kids did during the day.

Next, we visited the maze. There were 3 on the grounds. We went through the big one and then the girls went to the playground. We decided to leave at 3:30 so we could get the car returned to Hertz. We passed the Hertz but the gas station that the Hertz representative said was nearby, we did not find. So we drove and drove and finally found one. However, at that point, we were lost. So we asked at the gas station. I brought the map in while Scott filled up the car. When Scott came into pay, there were 5 guys and me going through the map. The employees spoke German but grabbed another customer who spoke English. Scott said it was a sight.

The directions were quite simple (I don’t know how since there were lots of words being spoken in German). But we missed the turn so we were lost again. Luckily, we were close to another Hertz location and I found a street on the map and we made it to the Hertz before we were charged another day. We navigated the rail cars and subway back to the hotel, and quickly took showers.

At the museum, we bought tickets to a music show in the Orangerie at Schonbrunn. It was where Mozart would perform for the empress. There were about 25-30 musicians. Also, there were dancers and opera singers. The girls liked it, especially the dancers. The music was all pieces by Mozart or Strauss. We sat behind a bunch of Americans, and two reminded me of people from home. And although they were too young to be the actual people, I noticed them. One guy lost his ticket and I told him where to find it – one of his friends had picked it up and was going to make him sweat it out but I spoke up and ruined the fun.

The concert ended at 10pm and we were back on the subway and in the hotel by 10:30. It was so nice to be back in A/C since the Orangerie, although we had been led to think otherwise, was not cool. One of the guest musicians (an oboeist) made two mistakes we think because her hands were just too sweaty and her fingers slipped a note.

We had another enjoyable night in A/C.

No comments:

Post a Comment