We arrived in Vienna in the afternoon just before the listed check in time at our apartment. We had attempted to make contact with the people through Boooking.com in regards to what the check in procedure is etc, but heard nothing back. The information from Booking.com just advised that someone would meet us there at 4pm. So here I am standing there at the front door at 4pm with Ella and no one is meeting us. It is bitterly cold and some people are coming and going but not many, it is a quieter residential part of town. So after a few minutes I attempt to call the number listed via WhatsApp and there is no answer. By this stage we are a little worried, Amy is waiting in the car with Abbie and we are parked in an area that is paid parking. After a few more minutes the mysterious person writes back on WhatsApp and simply writes “Hello… Are you in front of the unit?” They remotely buzz us in and we are under way.

It was a bit of a strange way to start our leg of the journey in Vienna. The next thing was parking, they don’t have ticket machines on every corner, the mysterious person told us on WhatsApp to go to a Tabak (tobacco) shop and buy a ticket there. So we all start heading off on foot, but we pass the parking inspector on the way so we attempt to tell him that we are going to get a ticket and to not give us a fine. So in the end Amy heads back and waits with the car. Ella and I continue on in the freezing cold looking for the tobacco shop, which we eventually find about 20 minutes later. We find out the next day that we could have just bought a parking ticket at the metro station literally 3 minutes from where we were parked.

After having seen endless churches and castles on our trip already we decided to do some fun things with the girls. So the next day we went to the Schonbrunn Zoo in Vienna, apparently this is the oldest zoo in the world and was founded in 1752. We saw a playful polar bear, a shy panda bear, emperor penguins and some hippos and rhinos along with the usual suspects including giraffes, and elephants. The girls loved it of course even though the weather was not the greatest. It was a little rainy, grey and overcast. There were no colourful skies here in Vienna!

After that we headed into the city to ride the Ferris wheel at Prater park, a large park that is home to a lot of amusement rides. We finished off our time in Vienna by taking a look in St Peters church. The next day we headed for Budapest via a quick detour to a little place called Pannonhalma where the beautiful Pannonhalma Archabbey sits on the hill looking out across the countryside. Unfortunately the Abbey was closed and we couldn’t go inside which was a little disappointing. There was however a very nicely designed lookout nearby so we made do with that instead.