Vienna

We started our last full day in Vienna with a trip to the world's second largest Swarovski store!

We had booked a small tour of the shop which turned out to be very informative and interesting about one of the worlds most famous jewellery brands. Some of the facts which we learnt included that:
-Daniel Swarovski was born in modern day Czech Republic, in a town famous for glass cutting.
- The business started with 8 people and there is now 35,000 worldwide.
- The logo of the swan represents beauty and has only been recently changed from facing left to facing right, supposedly to represent looking to the future.
- Swarovski creates the Oscar curtain each year for the academy awards and these are then returned to the brand to be displayed in different stores.

We enjoyed seeing the different collections, especially the impressive figurines of bears, Disney characters, animals and other collections. Some of the figurines are so impressive and are hand made, with an impressive price tag as well!

The tour finished with a generous glass of Moet, not bad for 11am!

We then caught the metro out to Schönbrunn Palace which was the summer estate of the Habsburg family, exploring the beautiful state apartments. Although we were unable to take photos, it was really cool walking through the palace and admiring the beautiful decor.

After exploring the building, we attended a strudel making class with a very charismatic baker who took us through the whole process! It was a lot of fun and we even got to enjoy a strudel as we watched the show. The main ingredients in the filling are sugar, rum, raisin and cinnamon which is of course why the apple strudel is so delicious!

Our final stop in Schönbrunn was the gardens, where we walked around and explored. It had rained the night before so everything was extra green and colourful! We went into the maze/labyrinth section and had a lot of fun getting lost and playing some of the garden games!

We then made our way back to the hostel to freshen up before heading out for dinner. What better way to spend our last night than going to a local schnitzel house called Scnitzelwirt! It is a very popular place and there was a bit of a queue but we didn't wait more than 15 minutes for a table. It was one of the best schnitzels we’d ever had (and huge!!) and it was great to go to a place where locals were also eating! Ed Sheeran visited this place last year and they had his photo on the front page of the menu!

We came back to the hostel to play some cards and do some planning for the last couple of weeks of our trip!Read more