Europe Trip #1 – April 12, 2022 – Vienna - Schönbrunn and The Prater

Editor’s note: Contains video. View at the website.

After a good night of rest for all of us in the Prater apartment, Buds and I headed out to explore the neighborhood. He had found a delightful sounding coffee house a couple blocks away and we wanted to try it out.

It was a perfect morning to be out exploring.

We walked through the Prater Amusement Park first. It looked quirky in the daylight.

We found Cafe Balthasar and sat outside to enjoy our shared carafe.

We ducked into a church on the walk back to the apartment. It was beautiful in the regular huge old church way, until we got to the front.

This is the first time in my 30 years of touring old churches in Europe that I ever remember there being an obvious presence of children welcomed in the main space. It was a breath of joy to see these little chairs and posters, right up at the front.

As we used to say in our UU church, “If there’s no cryin’, you are dyin’.” In other words, no babies, no future.

It made me so happy to see them up there.

Once we got back to the apartment we convinced the youngest two to do yoga with us.

Then Buds and the two eldest went out to a thrift store and made some awesome finds.

In the afternoon Monkey and I had tickets to Schönbrunn. We had been waiting 4 years to tour this palace and we were not going to be denied on this trip.

We couldn’t take pictures inside, but we loved it and wandered to our hearts content.

There was an Easter market on the grounds and we enjoyed walking through to see the food and crafts available.

Then a walk back to the train and back to the apartment to see what everyone else was up to.

That night Buds and I went back out to explore Prater after dark. This was when we rode the giant ferris wheel. It was fun to people watch and walk and talk.

Buds had fun taking video of the crazy rides. The pulsing American music seemed to contain a lot of curse words, which surprised us considering how family friendly it all is. Possibly if English isn’t your first language, they seem less offensive?

Another glorious day complete.