Today we went to the Schonbrunn palace.

Out of the 1400 rooms in the palace we were only allowed to see 40 and I’m sure glad of it. We picked up our audio guides and started our tour. One of the many emperors who lived at this palace was Francis Joseph. He lived a non lavish life getting up at 5am from a small bed, he worked, worked, worked and even had breakfast and lunch at his desk! One of many jobs as a empress is to have as many little emperors and empresses as you can so one of Joseph ancestors had 11 daughters and 5 sons! In the 1000000’s of portraits we saw they all looked the same! The history part of the palace was quite good The rest was average. We have seen it all before. Then we went into the gardens with red leave trees and wooden viewing plat forms, fountains and flowers – it was a great place to run around. We went up a Gloriette which is a building on a hill looking over the gardens. From the top we had yet another great view.

Then we went to a Apple Strudel show were we learnt how to make strudel in a traditional Viennese way and even got to try some!

There was an awesome maze which squirted water as you went around corners. It had hard activities and of course I made it to the middle first. In the play ground there was a cool big metal bird which you climbed into and made the wings flap and wobble around. That was fun but now I’m glad to be home!

(Visited Monday, 15 October 2012)