Austria: Vienna and Salzburg

After Paris, on to Vienna!  

Some cities keep their Christmas markets going after Christmas Day, and Vienna is one of them.  You may be getting tired of seeing all these photos of Christmas markets, but I must admit, they are fun and festive, and you get a feel for the foods they enjoy and discover their native crafts.

As you can see, we finally met snow!!  It was also VERY cold, particularly because of the icy wind.  See that building behind Nicholas?  It was a museum...and there is no better way to get kids to WANT to go into a museum than to get out of the cold and get WARM.  :)

The museum is the Kunsthistorisches (Art History) Museum.  I have to say, I have yet to be so impressed with the artifacts this museum had on display...intricate, exquisite, creativity at its finest.  The artists were all truly masters at their trades.  The museum itself was also a work of art...like a castle...gorgeous in every detail.  This was an impressive museum. 

Also, there was a special exhibit of the works Diego Valázquez, who we are studying for Spain history.  He is a famous Spanish painter (and lead artist in the court of King Phillip IV) who lived in the 1600s during the Spanish Golden Age.  There is a great teen historical novel which we have read called I, Juan de Pareja that tells the story from the perspective of Valázquez's true life slave.

This was a wood-carved backgammon game...here is the outside.

The inside...

And the playing pieces...

Every little thing was so detailed (and not always practical)...

This ship was like a mini automaton for the dinner table, crawling down the center with moving figures and shooting cannons.

A tea set with ceramic flowers at the top

Being silly...

Train ride to Salzburg...and more snow!

We find that usually our favorite restaurants in each place are the vegetarian ones!  This one is called The Green Garden.  The boys shared a glorious display of foods and sauces to create a fondue feast.

This was an incredible "pizza" with fabulous cheeses, grapes, arugula, 

and an amazing sweet peppercorn sauce.

Ray's risotto with pesto and grilled veggies

Ray got talking to the owner (of course!), and we both had a long and wonderful conversation with her.  In the meantime, the boys stepped outside to play in the snow...they made multitudes of snowmen just outside the restaurant.

Trees loaded with wonderful snow!

We really LOVE Salzburg!  The town is quaint and beautiful, and the home of Mozart.  We did go into his childhood birthplace and home, and learned yet more about this amazing composer.

Street performer/spectacle giving out postcards

These are tent "towers" over fountains for safety from the snow, and probably from people climbing up them from the snowbanks.

Did you know Red Bull started in Salzburg?!?  The owner of this shop says he sees the Red Bull founder around town on occasion and chats with him.

We found a fun store that sells hand painted ornamental eggs...the sheer number of them was impressive.  Eggs for every occasion and season.  We were told that the eggs come from a noodle company, and over 100 local artists do the detailed painting.

Salzburg along the river

We were in Salzburg for New Year's Eve.  I found it impossible to find a dinner reservation for that night (at a descent restaurant), even though I started trying well ahead.  I realized that we were going to have to rely on a cancellation, but how to know?  As we were exploring Salzburg, Ray would pop into various restaurants and ask for reservations.  None available.  Finally, he went into one place that didn't even look like a restaurant to me.  He was told they were full (and this was New Year's Day!), but he could check with another person upstairs.  When she got off the phone, he made his request, and she said she just got off the phone with a cancellation for 4 people for that evening!  We ended up having a fabulous meal at a wonderful restaurant...so perfect!

I should have taken the photo before Nicholas dug in, but this is his roast goose appetizer.  He is not an adventurous eater, but he really wanted to try this dish, and he ate every last morsel.

Nicholas' main dish of chicken stuffed with bacon.  He ate all this, too!

Jacob's dish of fish, savory strudel, and more...

After all that, here is Nicholas' dessert!  He ate almost all of it!

The door to the left is our dining area

The table where we dined.

After dinner, we went walking and playing in the snow prior to midnight.

After an hour and a half of the boys throwing snowballs, climbing up snow piles, plummeting into soft snowdrifts...and otherwise getting WET and therefore very cold, we headed back to the hotel by 10:30 to warm up and blow-dry shoes.  (We had opted not to bring our heavy snow boots in our already stuffed suitcases, as no snow was forecasted 10 days earlier when we left on the trip.)  Our hotel room, which was actually a funny little place not to our liking (again, you can't always trust the online reviews!), ironically had a fabulous view of firework displays all across the city with a 180-degree view through the room-wide window.  For over 2 hours, we had front row seats to hundreds of fireworks, many that citizens were shooting off, and some distant official fireworks shows.  What a spectacle!  It was hard to get good photos...they just didn't come out well.  But in the photo below, you can see the view (albeit in just one direction) with all the residual smoke from previously set-off fireworks.

So, we spent the rest of the evening in the warmth of our hotel room, being entertained with the colorful blasts outside, and FaceTiming family to say Happy New Year.  

It was a nice way to end 2014.  :)