The Summer Palace - Schonbrunn

Our mission for today - to visit the Sconbrunn summer palace and gardens on the outskirts of Vienna. Another very smooth train and metro ride took us to right outside it - we are really impressed with this transport system - cheap too. It only cost us 3euros 40 cents each way per person - that was for the train into Vienna and the metro. When we got to the train station we found our neighbours there, also on their way to Schonbrunn. We had a chat on the train - they are planning to move on to Krems and a river cruise before heading back to Holland on June 17th. Paul, the husband of the two was chatting and asking Steve what profession he has/had and when he told him he had been a policeman he couldn't believe it - he said Steve is much too friendly to be a policeman!! That says a lot about the Dutch police we think. Strangely Paul's wife practices reflexology and trained with the British School of Reflexology like I did - small world eh? She still practices and does pedicures as well. Maybe I should take it up again in Cyprus - we will see.

Outside the gate to the Shonbrunn we saw one of the tall trees we mentioned in an earlier blog and promised a picture of if we could. Take a look at the picture of one on this blog. You can see how tall it is compared to me - we have found out that they are Maypoles. One in each village and they centre their celebrations around them each May - simple as that. Some villages decorate them more than others.

We got to Schonbrunn and had a lovely shaded walk along an avenue to the house itself. When it emerged from the trees we were surprised to see how huge it is. There is lots of history attached to it of course - mainly Marie Theresia and Franz Joseph lived and ruled here - she had 16 children!!! and kept up the political side of it while he dealt with the finance and his hobbies (if he had time for any in between fathering children). One of their daughters was Marie Antoinette who married Louis X1V and both of them were beheaded. We did the tour of the house - all 40 rooms in their supreme splendour, then had our traditional Sunday lunch in one of their restaurants. That was lovely and we had to have a huge ice cream/cream dessert between us afterwards.

Our ticket included a visit to the bakery where there was a demonstration of how to make the traditional Apple Strudel with a free sample- yes on top of the dinner and dessert!! It was interesting but I won't rush out to make one.

Then we headed off to the Privy Garden with its lovely lemon and orange trees and well manicured flower beds. Then the Gloriette up the hill in the heat of the afternoon - yes it has been another scorcher. The Gloriette is a huge folly cum summer house built on top of the hill and overlooking the summer palace and Vienna - see pic. There was a lovely breeze up there and we needed it after the climb.

A climb back down the hill completed the days sightseeing for us and we caught the train home. The skies looked very dark and looming and the thunder started to rumble by the time we were back at the caravan. As we are moving on again tomorrow we decided to take down the sunshade so that we would not have to pack it wet through. We opted to ride our bikes again to McDonalds to write thi blog and got there just in time for the heavens to open. It is persisting it down as I write. Thankfully we have our waterproofs for the ride back to camp. Let's hope the rain cools things down a bit - it has been very hot and humid for the past couple of days.

Tomorrow we move on to Persenbeug, further up the Danube and between Linz and Krems -two beautiful towns to visit. We are only there for 2 nights though - it is really a stop over to shorten the long journey into Southern Germany where we will be able to visit Saltzburg and Munich depending on time available.

We are looking forward to a day of travelling to rest our weary legs from all the trudging around - but we have seen so much beauty our eyes are sore too!!