December 16

December 16:  Vienna City Tour / Schonbrunn Palace

Vienna City Tour

This morning, when the temperature was a little below 30 degrees, we boarded the bus for about a 40 minute bus ride around Vienna where our guide Gabriela explained the history of the city and described all the buildings on the ring-strasse which is the main thoroughfare that circles the city center.

We disembarked the bus and then had a walking tour around the palace area.  It was cold, but not nearly as cold as the second day! 

When the tour was complete we had an hour to ourselves so we visited St. Stephens Cathedral.  And then walked around the Christmas Market in the square outside the church.  Of COURSE I found the gluhwein and Dennis & Kim found their sausage!  We got our Christmas Market souvenir and pretty soon returned to the bus and drove back to the ship.

Schonbrunn Palace

It's a "funny tale" to tell, but this is how the second half of the day unfolded.  The original plan was for us to do the city tour with Dennis & Mary in the morning; then do Schonbrunn Palace with them.  Finally, Kim and I were doing an evening tour where we went to a wine/pub and spent the evening with other guests celebrating the day.  But this meant - we realized - that we wouldn't see any of the Vienna Christmas Markets at night with the lights.  So we decided to ditch the evening plan and we planned to take the metro or a taxi into the city to see the Christmas Markets.  THEN our guide (in the morning) explained that shuttles were running until 5 pm and since it gets dark around 3:30 we could come back in the city to see markets under lights if we ditched the Palace tour.  So we switched that plan so we'd be on guided events and not on our own.  Then it occurred to us with the Schonbrunn Palace tour ending at 5:30 pm we could see the market there under the lights and stick with the original plan.  But by the time we were done with the afternoon tour we decided we just too tired from the full day (and being out in the cold most of the day)....couple that with an 8:30 am excursion tomorrow and we opted to spend the evening on the ship.  Sooooo - we got to see the city; we saw the palace; we visited two Christmas Markets; AND we saw the market all lit up!

You probably noted in the photo at the top of the page our Santa hats!  We had purchased these when we bought the door decorations in Fort Lauderdale and have been waiting for the right excursion to wear them for a photo op.  The Schonbrunn Palace excursion seemed ideal so all four of us wore them.  From the moment we walked into the lobby we got comments all afternoon about how great our hats were :)  The palace tour was excellent - note that we were not allowed to photograph inside so the interior shots below were grabbed off the Internet.  We then had about an hour to explore the Christmas Market.  Yes....I got more gluhwein (and the souvenir cup) and we got another Christmas souvenir.  

The last thing to "check off" on the to do list for today was to return to the coffee shop at Schonbrunn Palace where when were here three years ago we got THE BEST apple strudel I've ever had.  Mission completed!  After a late dinner we were ready for bed and to prepare for the early morning excursion tomorrow.  AND we were informed at our "Port Talk" that if ANY night we could stay up, it should be tomorrow because around 11 pm we will be sailing into Budapest and the lights will be amazing!