In this episode, we spend two days in Salzburg with our kids, attempting to recreate Kasey’s childhood memories (well, most of them) from 2001. Success was mixed, but we had a great time overall. Viva Austria! 

When you grow up with three siblings and adventurous, travel-loving parents, you end up with two things: a love for travel, and a whoooooole bunch of stories.

Mostly stories about how you and your little band of compatriots’ antics nearly resulted in an international incident.

I’ve talked before about how my parents took my three siblings and I backpacking in Europe for three weeks when we were 13, 11, 9 and 7. It was a trip I will forever be grateful for because it kicked off my love of international travel, and because of the outrageous number of stories that we still love to retell every time we are together.

So our famous Salzburg story goes like this: My parents and I are sitting at a picnic table in an outdoor beer garden in Salzburg while the younger kids run around, and all of the sudden some guy comes up to our table and starts screaming at my parents in German. My parents obviously have no idea what he’s saying or why; to be honest, they basically assume it is a case of mistaken identity. The angry man, apparently appreciating that they have no idea what is happening, storms off. Immediately my parents start laughing.

Until someone nearby calls over them to explain:

“He says, your children, they are throwing rocks on his new car.”

INSTANTLY: my parents are completely horror-struck and jump off the benches to find out what the hell is happening.

It turns out, my youngest siblings were pushing pebbling off a rock wall over which they could not see. No malice involved, but as an adult I can obviously see why the guy was SUPER PISSED.

But for the rest of the trip? Randomly saying, “YOUR CHILDREN, THEY ARE THROWING ROCKS ON HIS NEW CAR” invariably cracked us all up.

Shit. We sound like horrible people as I type this, don’t we? But trust me, it was funny as hell at the time.

ANYWAY. This is a very long-winded and strange way to begin explaining that Salzburg has a special place in my heart. It was one of my very favorite cities on the 2001 trip, to the point that I insisted it be included on the itinerary for my high school graduation trip with my mom in 2005 (yes, I am extremely lucky). I freaking love Salzburg.

So visiting with my own children … it was a lot of pressure.

Overall, we had a wonderful time. But I will admit I spent the first day trying to make the trip be exactly the same as I remembered from my childhood (despite being there in winter rather than spring or summer, and my kids being significantly younger than I was) and it was not the best way to go. Every trip is different, and honestly, you can’t go home again. Still, we ended up having a lovely time (particularly on day two).

Here’s a quick look at our itinerary for our two days in Salzburg with kids:

Day 1:

-Mirabell gardens

-Sound of Music tour

-Attempt to visit the Augustiner Brewery

-Take away for dinner and watching “A Christmas Prince” in our apartment*

*I laugh, but Fiona has now watched that movie and its two(!) sequels a million times. She adores Queen Amber and King Richard LOL.

Day 2:

-Berchtesgaden salt mine tour

-Salzburg zoo

-Christmas Market at Hellbrunn Palace

-Take away again and watching Home Alone 2, because we tired.

Just to keep it real over here — apartment rentals with Netflix? Absolutely wonderful. And while we like to eat out, we find that for us it often works better to make our big meal of the day lunch. If we’ve been marching the kids around all day, we’re usually ready to get something quick and easy to take back to our place. For the kids, that’s usually fast food. For us adults, it is usually some kind of Asian food that we can’t get back in Sicily, with Thai, Indian or Japanese being the favorites.

Anyway, without further ado — here are the details:

Day 1: Mirabell gardens and the Sound of Music tour

As a 13-year-old, I had very fond memories of taking the Sound of Music tour with my family. Everyone on our bus was singing! The driver was hilarious! We frolicked like Maria!

Unfortunately, the group we ended up with on our early-December Sound of Music tour was not what you would call “lively.” We had the kids watch the movie before we left in preparation for this, but when the sing-along portion of events came along, only Fiona and I were all that interested in belting out Do-Re-Mi. Lame!

The tour kicked off near Mirabell Gardens (a filming location), and since we had a bunch of time to kill beforehand we ended up exploring the gardens on our own. It’s pretty, and I’m certain it would be even more lovely in the summertime.

So as I mentioned, the Sound of Music tour was a bit disappointing (not from lack of effort on our guide’s part — I think it was the group). Still, it was fun to see some filming locations.

After we finished our tour (skipping the Mirabell gardens part at the end, since we’d explored independently and it was already dark), we headed to the Augustiner Brewery … otherwise known as the scene of The Incident in 2001.

Unfortunately, the winter weather meant the outdoor beer garden — the scene of the German man yelling about his car — was closed and the tables moved away. Inside, we found every table either packed with people or with reserved signs on them. It was a Monday night, so I have no idea why there were so many people there? Nevertheless, after wasting a ton of time trolling for a table, we ultimately gave up in frustration. We headed back to our apartment, got McDonald’s for the kids, Japanese for us and settled in to watch “The Christmas Prince” on Netflix.

If that last bit sounds a little tragic, don’t worry — it was honestly great. We needed a break and our food was fabulous. (Even if I did accidentally order Chris a hilariously spicy dish. Sorry, babe).

Day 2 in Salzburg: salt mine tour, zoo and Christmas markets

So, I fear that Day 1 in Salzburg may have sounded like a bit of a bummer. Day 2, however, was just jam-packed with awesome.

When I visited with my family, we ALSO did a salt mine tour so I was determined to do that with my kiddos. However, having had two of my favorite childhood memories of Salzburg not quite pan out as expected, I was extremely nervous that the salt mine wouldn’t live up to my memories.

However, I didn’t need to worry. It ended up being the kids’ favorite part of the entire Salzburg trip!

We visited the Berchtesgaden salt mine, which is actually in Germany (we didn’t realize this until we drove over the border, haha), and could not recommend it more strongly. It is even cooler than it was in 2001. 18 years later, they even had a bunch more cool light effects than I remember.

Each of us was issued a salt miner outfit to wear, including the baby. I don’t know why that cracks me up so much, but it does.

Photography was not allowed on the tour, but it had some very cool visual effects. We got to ride the train, a funicular, two wooden slides (not me and Lochie) and take a boat across a lake. It was 100 percent awesome!

After we finished at Berchtesgarden, we opted to head over the Salzburg Zoo. Zoos are one of our “things” (along with castles) that we always seem to wind up visiting. Salzburg Zoo, which is on the same property as the Hellbrunn Palace, was especially enticing to some of us because it was free on the day we came (up to 5 euro on some days, season-dependent). Free is our favorite.

And man. Remember how I mentioned that visiting the Vienna Zoo highlighted how much more trust the Austrian people have in their citizenry to not do things like, say, jump into a wildabeest pen? The Salzburg zoo took it to a new level. There weren’t really people working there (that we could see), so the whole thing was self-guided. But in several places there were little houses you could just walk into and bam! Loose animals! Like, we walk into one of them, look up and realize there is a sloth just … hanging out. Within arm’s reach. I’m sure there must be security cameras or something, but at the time the only thing actually keep up from reaching up to touch him was a sign that warned that he bites. Whatttttttttttt?!

I’m not sure if it was the chilly weather or what, but the animals also seemed to be extremely active. We got up close and personal with a wolf pack (who were probably trying to decide which of the kids to eat) and watched some baby leopards harassing their mom and dad in a very familiar way. Per usual, the kids were completely enthralled by the parakeets whose love you could buy with 1-euro worth of seeds. By all means, kids, let’s obsess over the one thing in this place we could pick up at the local pet store.

As I mentioned, the zoo was on the Hellbrunn Palace property. At that time of year, Hellbrunn Palace was also home to a Christmas market and, oh man, it was gorgeous. There’s always been a special place in our heart for Christmas markets (especially for Chris), and this one was one to remember.

We didn’t end up buying much, just wondered around look at pretty items the vendors were selling, eating the delicious food and taking in the Christmas lights. The sights and smells of a Christmas market will never get old, I swear.

From the pictures, I realize it looks like we were there very late. But, by the time we got home it was really only a little after 6 p.m. However, given that we were completely exhausted, we ended up opting for the easiest option — take away food for the win again!

We had to head to Munich to catch our flight home early the next morning, so that wrapped up our week in Germany and Austria. We had a spectacular time! Traveling in cold weather can be a little challenging (more to pack, have to worry about everyone staying warm), but we enjoy having smaller crowds to deal with and — the kids’ favorite — snow to play with.

Overall, I would say Salzburg was the best for me once I stopped trying to exactly replicate my childhood memories, and made some of our own. Though I’d be lying if I didn’t half-wish we had some kind of “international incident” of our own to go down in family lore.

But hey, there’s always time, right?

The post 2 days in Salzburg with kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post 2 days in Salzburg with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

How is it that practically every place we go immediately becomes a favorite and a “we-must-go-back-one-day”? Perhaps we just fall in love too easily, but when it comes to Vienna, I’m pretty sure this is the real deal.

We were lucky enough to spend four-and-a-half days in Vienna earlier this month and found it to be a perfect family-friendly spot. And while we originally intended to spend one of those days in nearby Bratislava, Slovakia — we ultimately abandoned this plan the morning of, in a fit of laziness — we still didn’t see absolutely everything we’d intended to. Which actually leads me to my first piece of advice: give yourself enough time in this beautiful city!

I’ll get to details like where we stayed, what we ate and how we got around toward the end here, but I wanted to start by talking about our favorite attractions. We took things at a pace about two main activities per day, so four-and-a-half days worked out nicely for us.

Vienna with kids: our favorite activities

1. Schonbrunn Palace, Gardens, Labyrinth and Gloriette

Schonbrunn Palace was the summer residence of the Austrian empire’s ruling family, the Hapsburgs. Having read a lot of historical fiction that involves this place I would have been interested regardless, but really got us most excited about going there wasn’t the fancy wallpaper — it was everything outside the palace. (Though the audio guide tour inside, which takes about an hour, was excellent as well.)

The grounds of Schonbrunn Palace were incredible, with lots of gardens (only a fraction of which we actually saw) and — best of all — hedge mazes! We must have spent at least an hour and a half in the hedge maze area of this place alone, as it was the absolute perfect spot for running around with kids. Owen had been complaining all morning that his foot hurt, but to no one’s surprise that alleged ailment disappeared almost as soon as we walked into the grounds. 

There was also a very nice park within this area, where the kids spent a considerable amount of time playing while we sipped coffee and chilled out.

After the maze we opted to head toward the Schonbrunn Zoo (more on that in our next item), but we finished up our day at Schonbrunn with a visit to the Gloriette. Located at the top of a hill at the far end of the Schonbrunn gardens, it was built to be essentially a big dining hall/party spot because of the spectacular views of the palace below. Definitely don’t skip the chance to pop up there!

1A. Schonbrunn Zoo (Tiergarten Schonbrunn)

I’m adding this as a separate item because honestly, we could have spent most of a day just hanging out here! A few things to know:

1. It is the oldest continuously operating zoo in the world, having opened as a royal menagerie in 1752
2. Operators seems to have a lot more faith that people won’t try to jump fences and go pet a rhino or whatever than any of the American zoos I’ve visited
3. Watch out for bats.

Story time, kids. So we were walking through a cool Amazon exhibit within this zoo, which was a building basically set up to resemble a rainforest. Very cool concept, right? Until we reach a spot where they had some kind of dual curtain set up, presumably to keep whatever was inside from accidentally escaping into the rest of the building. We don’t think much of it and head in. As we are between the little space between the two curtains (where we got briefly delayed) Chris informs me that, ‘heads up, one of the birds is in here.’

And then we walk into the room. And it is dark. And the birds are flying really erratically all around us.

Chris: ‘That’s a lot of birds.’

Me: ‘Those aren’t birds.’

IT WAS BATS, GUYS. BATS SWOOPING EVERYWHERE.

BATS.

Owen karate-chopped the whole walk through. I was apparently repeating “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine” over and over (I don’t remember this). Chris and Fiona were just trying to find the exit as quickly as possible. Lochie was sleeping.

This was my face as we stepped out:

Despite this — and the fact that after leaving we realized there were GIANT BATS JUST CHILLING ON THE CEILING OF THE BUILDING — this zoo was excellent. Zoos are kind of one of our “things” we tend to seek out when we go to new cities, and this was definitely a good one.

It also had quite a nice park and a random climbing wall that the kids loved as well.

A note about tickets to Schonbrunn: Knowing we wanted to see it all, we opted to buy the Schonbrunn Classic Pass Plus, which included admission to the palace, privy garden, orangerie garden, hedge maze and labyrinth, gloriette and zoo. We did the family pass, which was good for up to two adults and three kids; it spendy at 89 euro, but cheaper than buying tickets for each individually. I think it worked out well for us, but I will caution that it is a LOT to see in one day. For the palace you have to select a time that you will enter if you pre-buy the tickets, and we selected 10 a.m. since we were getting in late the night before. We ended up staying at Schonbrunn until 6 p.m., and didn’t even see everything we could have wanted. If you don’t think that’s your travel style, you’d be better off splitting your visit into two days.

2. Prater Amusement Park

This was easily one of the kids’ favorite attractions — the amusement park at Prater Park, originally the site of the 1873 World’s Fair. Today there’s a ton going on in the Prater area, including plenty of green space, restaurants, a Madame Tussaud’s, a chocolate museum, indoor skydiving and more. However, we focused on the vast amusement park. The kids went on rides and into various fun houses (including Owen’s first roller coaster and some swings that Fiona adored and that made Owen and I nauseated).

Unfortunately, everything was a bit expensive so when we got to the historic Ferris Wheel — it dates back to 1873, whaaaaat — I ended up bailing on actually riding it because of the price. In the aftermath, that seems like a dumb call but oh well!

We ended the evening with a stop in at the park’s famous beer garden, the Schweizerhaus, for fuel for the trip home. 

3. Spanish Riding School stable tour

You can’t go Vienna without seeing their famous Lipizzan horses, right? Right? We didn’t end up seeing any of the actual “horse dancing” this time around (though if you are interested, look into attending morning exercises (most weekdays) or performances (weekends) when you are there.) We opted instead to take a one-hour tour of the stables, which I thought would be fun for the kids because they’d get to see the horses close up. It was also a nice opportunity to get to learn the history of the “Baroque” horses (tour guide: “We call them ‘Baroque horses’ because we don’t want you going home describing Vienna’s ‘short, fat horses’) and of the school itself. Highly recommend! Be warned, however, children under 3 aren’t allowed. Chris and Lochie hung out in a nearby cafe.*

*True story: people treat Chris like he is some kind of saint when he has the baby on his own, particularly if he is baby-wearing. Some woman came up to him and gave him a gift while I had the big kids elsewhere at Prater, and she apparently wasn’t even trying to rob him or shake him down (my first assumption). I’m still waiting for MY gold medal for carrying him around the other 95 percent of the time!

4. Museum of Natural History

Another popular destination for our crew was — no surprises here — the Natural History Museum of Vienna, an enormous facility with more than 100,000 objects on display. Its earliest collections date back more than 250 years to Emperor Franz Stephan, husband of the famed Empress Maria Theresa, who was passionate about natural history. While some of the museum seems “old school” — lots and lots of stuffed animal specimens behind glass — there are also quite a few hands-on activities for busy kiddos.

Probably the most fun thing we saw was a life-size animatronic Allosaurus that would periodically come to life and move its body around. Mostly to look as if it were hunting us, because obviously it is much funnier when people get freaked out and think the thing is going all “Night at the Museum.” Or, all “Jurassic Park.”

Second best part was Chris trying to grab* a bajillion-year-old spear at the Ancient Man exhibit, and setting off a super loud alarm. Picture the scene in Despicable Me where a million automated guns and bombs are pointed at Gru outside of Vector’s house. It was basically that.

*He maintains that he “accidentally grazed it” while trying to explain something to the kids. A likely story.

5. Hofburg Imperial Palace and Sisi Museum

The Hofburg is the former main residence of the Hapsburg family, and is currently the residence and workplace of the president of Austria. This visit, toward the end of our trip, was another compromise activity for the kids — something I really wanted to see but that they didn’t really care about. Luckily for Fiona, there was an audioguide and a grisly murder to obsess over. If you don’t know, Empress Elizabeth, or “Sisi,” was assassinated in Geneva in 1898. The famously beautiful and rather unpredictable empress is a figure of popular fascination for a lot of people, and thus there is an entire section of the Hofburg dedicated to telling her story.

Unfortunately, listening to the audioguide about all this meant Fiona had a LOT of follow-up questions about how Sisi was stabbed. And with what. And why. And whether she died. And if it hurt. And how, again? Whoops.

Anyway, we bought tickets for this one on the day of (compared to many other tickets we booked ahead of time) and it was a nonissue, though I’ve heard there can be lines in high season. Tickets included a visit to the Imperial silver collection, the Sisi Museum and royal apartments.

The second two were interesting enough (though between the two, we preferred Schonbrunn Palace), but the silver collection was the highlight.

Not because it was that interesting, but because I about died laughing watching my wonderful husband try SO HARD to be interested in these damn plates.

For my benefit, obviously, but um —

Second funniest was seeing Fiona’s frustration when we tried to move her more quickly though the plates when she was STILL LISTENING TO THE AUDIOGUIDE.

Owen was sulking, which would normally annoy me but in this case — solidarity, buddy.

Anyway, the Sisi Museum was cool and so were the apartments, but I think it was possible we were getting a bit “palace-d” out by this point. And yes, that is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds. Just keeping it real over here.

6. Stadtpark and Ringstrasse 

We actually stumbled into this city park on accident after we stopped at a nearby train station, Wien Mitte, to leave our stuff in a luggage locker on our last day. We always like to seek out parks when traveling with kids though since it gives them a chance to recharge their batteries with free time after we’ve dragged them through, say, an endless display of Imperial place settings. This one had a couple different playgrounds, including one where Fiona made and split with a “best friend” within a roughly 10-minute period. Fun times.

The Stadtpark is also bordered by the tree-lined Ringstrasse, a grand boulevard built by Emperor Franz Joseph I to replace the city walls. A huge number of Vienna’s most iconic sights are on the Ring Road, so we were on and off it repeatedly during our trip. However, we liked this bit particularly because it was just so gorgeous with the autumn leaves.

7. Museum of Illusions, Vienna

This is another thing that’s become a bit of a habit for us — visiting illusions museums. The kids fell in love with them in Ljubljana, so now we make a point of going to them when we can. They tend to feature a lot of the same things, but they are always a crowd-pleaser. In this case, it was Owen and Fiona’s reward for going through the Hofburg.

8. St. Stephen’s Cathedral and other pop-ins

Yeah, yeah, this category is a bit of a cop-out. “And other pop-ins,” Kasey, really? Yeah, well, Vienna is chock full of incredible buildings and there are only so many you can marvel at. We popped into St. Stephen’s Cathedral on the way to getting schnitzel the size of our faces on Day 2. We stuck to the free stuff in the church and stayed for approximately four-and-a-half minutes. As it happens, we are also a little “churched out.” Sorry!

Now, on to something just as important — where we ate! 

VIENNA’S BEST NOMS (in our humble opinion)

or, “Where to eat in Vienna with kids”

or, “EAT HERE DUMMIES, THESE PLACES ARE DELICIOUS”

1. Figlmuller Backstrabe, “the home of schnitzel.” This is the only place we made reservations, and I’m glad we did because there was already a line forming when we arrived. We ordered three of these schnitzels because Chris and I usually don’t doubt our ability to finish a meal, but holy cow. These defeated us. The kids didn’t even make it through half of one. So delicious though! 2. Mnozil’s Gastwirtschaft Zum Kellergwolb. That’s one helluva a name, eh? Regardless, this was our last meal and possibly the best. Cozy atmosphere, absolutely delicious food and reasonable (for Vienna) prices. Definitely head here and get the kasespatzel with bacon and onions. It’s to die for!

   

   3. Augustinerkeller Bitzinger. We stumbled across this place en route to the Hofburg, and you better believe we made our way back after we finished plate-peeping (bet you thought I was done bringing up the plates, didn’t you? NOPE). It was everything we love about these “keller” (cellar) restaurants: warm, cozy and inviting. Plus, beer. 

   

   4. Glacis Beisel. Our refuge after a morning spent in the Museum Quarter, Glacis Beisel offered delicious food in a gorgeous setting. Get the dumplings! 

   5. Restaurant Schwabl. If you are looking for food near Schonbrunn, this is a good spot! We chose it for our first night because it was quite near our apartment and had excellent reviews. Not going to lie, we both had some serious doubts when we walked in but we ended up having an EXCELLENT meal here. I can’t remember what mine was actually called, but it was pork swimming in some kind of cream sauce and it was amazing.

   6. Naschmarkt. We also popped through the Naschmarkt (open-air market) one morning. While it isn’t anything compared to Barcelona’s food market, we had a few tasty snacks along the way. We were there in the morning so we didn’t indulge, but it looked like a decent place to have a casual glass of wine or beer as well. There’s a nice coffee/chocolate shop right in the middle that we recommend as well. As is always the case when we travel, we also ended up at a McDonald’s one night for the kids. If anyone is wondering, for some reason McDonald’s was cheaper there than in Italy! Go figure. Also, if you are looking for cheap eats, there are a lot of options just outside the Schwedenplatz U-Bahn station. On a couple of nights when we made lunch our big meal instead of dinner, we just grabbed sausages, slices of pizza or take-away noodles over there for super cheap on our way back to our apartment.

   

   Vienna with kids: where we stayed & how we got around

   Where we stayed: We booked an AirBnB near Schonbrunn Palace, in what proved to be a quiet little neighborhood. There were a couple good restaurant options near us and we were able to hit up our neighborhood Lidl every morning for breakfast. However, it was a little further from most of the attractions we wanted to see every other day. The U-Bahn station billed as being “close” was a bit of a walk, otherwise I don’t think it would have been all that annoying.

How we go around: On our own two feet, a lot of the time! We walked a little more than 35 miles in the five days we were in Vienna, which isn’t bad considering Owen and Fiona were almost-7 and just-turned-5 at the time of this trip! But beyond this, we took the U-Bahn pretty much everywhere, which worked out very well. As always, European public transit experiences makes us long for such efficient, easy-to-use systems in the U.S.

Airport transfers: Because we landed in Vienna so late, we prearranged a taxi-van to pick us up (with car seats and booster seats!) and deposit us at our AirBnB. We like public transit, but we weren’t about to deal with it with three cranky kids at 11:30 p.m., haha. On the way back, however, we took the EXCELLENT dedicated City Airport Train (CAT). I can’t say enough good stuff about this train — it only goes from the airport to Wien Mitte train station, and thus it delivers you there in only 16 minutes. It is a little pricey at 11 euro per adult, but kids are free so it worked out nicely for us. Even better, if you are flying on certain airlines you can check your bags in for the airport AT THE TRAIN STATION. For the rest of us, there were storage lockers where you could stash your stuff (free!).

*Be warned, however — our intent was to store our things in a different luggage room at Wien Mitte, and it was completely full. We were fortunately able to grab the last remaining locker at the CAT lounge and stashed half our stuff, but ended up having to drag one of our suitcases with us to the Stadtpark and to lunch (and skipped our last destination, the House of Music, because we wasted so much time trying to find another luggage storage place.) I wouldn’t count on being able to store your stuff if you are there in high season, and maybe not even in low season.

And now just some extra pictures of our adorable kids in Vienna

The post Vienna with kids: our favorite family-friendly activities first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Vienna with kids: our favorite family-friendly activities appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.