Castles, Cathedrals, Concerts, Chocolates, Church, Chums and Children (the longest post ever)

Here is a sweetened condensed account of the past few days:

Friday Sept. 18th-
Today we went to the Schönbrunn Palace. This beautiful place has a huge garden (more like a mini-forest) behind the lovely banana colored palace. Within the palace gardens there is a maze, a labyrinth (complete with puzzles to solve before you moved on), specially designed playground, a huge fountain with sculptures, and a big hill in the back with another building (called the Gloriette) at the top. As we enjoyed a picnic of nutella sandwiches atop the hill, we could see the amazing swirling patterns made out of flowers and bushes that are planted in the palace lawns. On the walk back down to the palace, I found a ladies room, but had to pay half a Euro (almost 75 cents) to use the facilities! Once we were home again, I got up enough guts to go grocery shopping by myself and it went surprisingly well. We watched some German TV for a while, but it's pretty hard to understand what's going on unless it's a kids show :) So, I thought my German speaking abilities were pretty good, but once we came to Germany/Austria I have quickly discovered that I can speak and understand a mere fraction of what I assumed back home! But we are getting by and having a great time. I've learned a lot so far. Maybe by the time we fly home I'll be up to par.

Here are Friday's pictures:

(p.s. - have I mentioned yet that we don't have an actual camera on this trip? we are just using our iPhones for all the pictures. So sorry if they are blurry and bad sometimes. Our real camera died on the Provo river, but that's a story for another day.)

Schönbrunn PalaceMain Fountain - The guy in the middle is King Tritan and all the people are riding Mer-Horses. Horses have webbed hoofs
The gardens looking up towards the Gloriette (Picture courtesy of Wikipedia)This is a bad view from the Gloriette towards the palace and the city. These 30 ft. high sculpted bushes make corridors all throughout the palace gardens.sculpted bushesCatherine and Jackson at the maze look-out with the fountain in the background
Peter and Sean being silly. Labyrinth in the background.

This was a mind puzzler in the labyrinth that Sean spent a while solving. They are big cement tiles in the gravel. Can you figure it out? Get to the center (0) by starting on the bottom row's +1 tile. You can move however many spaces the tile you're standing on says. (Ignore the + and - signs...those are for the advanced version) So, if you are on the +1 bottom center tile, you can move 1 space any direction. Say you move one space to the right and now you're on the 3. So, you can move 3 spaces. Get it? Good luck!Mirror section at the playground. There were all kinds of mirrors bent in different ways to create optical illusions.


Saturday, Sept. 19th-
Today we went to the Donau Insel (danube island) and walked on part of the 12 mile trail to a water playground. Then we walked a little farther and found THE coolest playground ever, complete with zip-line. Next, we got lunch at the Nachmarkt, found a crazy flea market, and saw a really strange guy with no legs who was scooting around the entrance of the U-Bahn yelling stuff. He totally freaked me out. After naptime we walked towards the city center and found a nice place to eat in a "spacious" alley. We kept walking and found an open air concert that was free, awesome, and they gave out free water (carbonated) and bread. Cardiac Move was the band. We passed the opera house on the way home and watched Madam Butterfly on their huge screen outside the building. The kids did really well even though we were out late. It was really a great evening! Here are some pics:
The playgrounds here are more like kid challenge courses. The idea isn't to have good safe fun. It's to see if you can hang on tight enough, climb high enough, keep your balance long enough, avoid the gaping cracks in the bridge, and pass the playground test. Even though you're only 2 feet tall. These Austrians are serious about playground fun. When we go to a playground, Sean and I have just as much fun as Peter!Peter's doing his silly camera face during dinner. I don't know who taught him that....Me and Jackson waiting for our Cordon Bleu and Pommes. During dinner, we could hear an accordion player in the alley behind us. There are always street musicians trying to make a little money. Some are actually pretty good!


Sunday, Sept. 20th -
After a 45 minute train/bus ride to the church, we followed a little family wearing church clothes down the street for a while in hopes that they were headed to the Mormon church! Lucky for us, they were :) Once inside we were warmly welcomed. It was so nice to be at church, even though we didn't understand much. But we met some new friends, the Petersen's who also have two boys. They invited us to come hang out at their house and have dinner. They were so hospitable and kind to bring us to their home, feed us, play, talk, offer a bed for napping, and a play shirt for Peter. We had a ton of fun. It was so nice to be in a normal house again with awesome people who speak English! After an amazing dinner, we were chauffeured home with full bellies and happy memories. Many, many thanks to the Petersen's for a wonderful Sunday.
Peter with his two new buddies. Eating sandwiches, apples, juice, and being silly as usual!

Monday, Sept. 21st-
I declared today shopping day. We walked down Maria Hilfer Strasse past all the big shops. We passed lots of designer clothes stores, passed funny hat shops, passed touristy souvineer shops, but we didn't pass the bakeries. We went right inside! Yummm....I got an amazing fruit-topped-cream-filled delight and Sean got a strawberry cream jelly roll. Incredible. Then we found an H&M store and went in to see if we could make ourselves look fashionable.
Peter succeeded. I managed to find a really cute black dress. Sean got all shopped-out after a little while and didn't feel like trying on any of the skinny pants or button up shirts. So our shopping spree came to an unfortunate halt. But it was good, really, because we all needed a long nap.
We were invited by our landlords (Inge and Willhelm) to have a musical FHE at their place with their son Michael and his wife, so we headed over after we'd rested up for a bit. Inge had made us some yummy mini pancake things and brought out little cups of milk. We sat and happily ate, feeling like little kids because we couldn't really communicate with her very well. And she is just the kind of lady who takes such good care of you it makes you feel like a little kid. Then out came the violins, the piano was uncovered, and we all had a good time making music, singing and dancing. The old man took Peter by the hands and danced around and around, laughing all the while. The old lady held Jackson and giggled as she squeezed his chubby legs and wiped his drool. Michael and his wife (I can't remember her name...she's Chinese) played hymns and primary song duets on their violins while Sean and I took turns at the piano. The old couple laughed and laughed at how funny and cute the kids were. We played a game where we blew cotton balls across the table with straws and Peter almost cracked a rib laughing - it was so cute! We had a very lovely evening with them.

Willhelm dancing around with Peter atop his shoulders. Peter loved having so much attention!

Tuesday, Sept. 22
Back to the trains to find churches. Sean and I have been taking turns deciding what to do each day. Today Sean planned to go "tower-hopping". The idea was to start at one church, climb the tower, and find the next church to go to. But the problem was that none of the churches let people climb the towers. So that put a damper on our plans. But we still had fun! We found the Franz von Assisi church at Mexikoplatz. We think sign out front said that the church was named after Mexico because they were the only country that officially opposed the annexing of Austria by Germany to the UN back when Hitler was taking stuff over. The church was really incredible inside. We went to another church called the Jesuitenkirche that was also amazing inside. It's incredible how ornate and majestic these buildings are inside. They all have so much detail involved in every nook and cranny. And what's really crazy is that they are all over the place here! You can find a beautiful church every 10 minutes. It's amazing to see how much work and creativity has gone into each of the churches.

Looks like a fairytale dream castle! Photo courtesy here

Here's a picture of the organ for you, Nora :)

I have to mention our very fancy money carrying pouch. We brought it all the way from Utah and it has turned out to be very useful. I wanted to get a picture and pay tribute before it dies. It has a hole in the side and the zipper is on it's last legs, but it has been perfect!Here is our lovely bedroom. I am amazed that we get a good nights rest with all of us together in here. But we're really comfy and happy!