Austria!

Now for what you've all been waiting for.... pictures from Austria! This won't be all of them, but one of several posts to come within the next week or so.

Day 1 & 2: Flight

We flew out of Pittsburgh at 6:30pm. Two layovers, 3 planes, 1 bus, 2 trains, and 17 hours later we made it to our destination, Tim and Marina's apartment in Vienna. For the trans-Atlantic flight we were fortunate enough to have an empty seat next to us so we could have a seat for James. But, for a kid who likes a dark, quite crib to roll around in and sleep, he had a tough time falling asleep. Once he did he woke up every hour for the first few hours then finally got a 3-4 hour stretch until we had to wake him when we landed in Paris. James was a trooper! He was happy to stretch his legs and run around even though it was 3am, our time. We had a 3 hour layover, but it was a good thing because we didn't know how to get around the airport and they just do things differently there. When we got on a bus to take us to our plane, James fell asleep and slept till we landed in Vienna. Then we opted to take the nicer (more expensive) train into the city, where we caught the subway (the U-Bahn, which we became very familiar with), and then walked about a half mile (and 6 flights of stairs) to our final destination! Exhausting!

Day 3: Stephansplatz

Stephansplatz is like the downtown of Vienna with St. Stephans cathedral in the center and several streets of stores and restaurants radiating from it. We were all a bit jet-lagged, but we managed to get out for dinner. Tim and Marina had a dinner and talk to go to for Tim's work, so they got us over to Stephansplatz, walked around with us, and helped us find a good place to get real Austrian food. The cathedral was amazing, the food was amazing and we couldn't pass up sharing an ice cream cone!

Day 4: Butterfly house

It was pretty crazy that it was the end of the week already and I felt like we had slept more than anything else. So the only thing we did this day was get out to the butterfly house. This small greenhouse-like building housed lots of different types of butterflies. You walked along this gravled path with the butterflies fluttering around you. James had just recently formed an obsession with rocks so it was very hard to get him interested in the butterflies when all he wanted to do was dig in the rocks.