Vienna and Schonbrunn Palace

The breakfast is good but poor coffee. Unusual for Vienna not to have good coffee. We took the tour to the Schonbrunn Palace and did the tour. Arven was very taken with the ceramic stoves. they were filled with wood or coal from a secret passage at the back so that servants were not seen. Main guy was Franz Joseph and his wife Elizabeth, ( Zizi,) ....
It was a good tour, lots of ceramics.
We got metro back and walked around main streets and went back to Beim Czaak for lunch.
Even though it was cold and windy we walked all round the ring, Opera, Albertina, Rathaus plus the park with the statues of Mozart and Franz Joseph. We had a look at the Palm house and the butterfly house.
When we were here in 2007 M and Orls had visited. We had gone for coffee in Shotteng cafe and in 1983 we visited the Mozart cafe. We checked and they still have Gnokerl on the menu !!!
Looked into Demel's but it was packed and the little pub opposite the hotel ( from 2007 ) has closed. We decided to head to the airport.
The station was being renovated ( another one ) and the signage was very poor. It was a good walk to get to our platform to find CAT for the airport.
The airport itself was very busy with very few seats. The security was at each individual gate. Long queues. There was a flight for Tehran at our gate just before the Dublin flight. We couldn't access the gate until that had totally cleared. We flew Aer L so came into T1. The flight was late and we had to walk to T2 to exit for some reason, then back around to T1 to get the bus to the car park.
It was a long saga at the airport but a good break.Read more