Day 2 - Vienna

Happy Birthday Tom!!  We began our day at St. Stephen's Cathedral, followed by a walking tour of Old Town Vienna.  Major sites included The Hofburg Palace, Spanish Riding School, and St. Peter's Church.  The interior was a very pleasant surprise.

Before we reached our final destination we happened upon a outdoor shop featuring the latest in Viennese deer hunting attire.  Tom strongly suggests that we adopt this style for Missouri deer hunting; we'll scare the hell out of them. 

Our last stop was a guided tour of the Vienna State Opera House, the Staatsoper.  We wish we could have had time to see an opera, but the tour was wonderful.  So glad we did!!

We ended the day with dinner at der Schwabl Restaurant to celebrate Tom's birthday.  Bill was advised that this would be a good place for dinner during a tete-a-tete with Hansel (but no Gretel).

 We returned to the hotel and finished up our blog over some fine Irish Whiskey and wine.  Tomorrow we're off to Hungary.

                                    

Travel Day and Day 1

We met up in Chicago O'Hare Airport and had lunch at the Cubs Bar and Grill.  Our flight from Chicago to Berlin was delayed leaving due to a mechanical failure.  The captain requested extra fuel so he could but the pedal to the metal and make up lost time.  We arrived in Berlin in plenty of time to make our connecting flight to Vienna.

Our rental van was exactly what we needed for our 11 pieces of luggage (as usual we packed light).  We found our hotel, parked the car and walked across the street to the Schoenbrunn Palace.  We stopped on the way for a snack at the Schoenbrunner Stockl Restaurant. Upon arriving at the Palace, Lisa was not happy when she found out she could not take any pictures of the interior.  Post cards will have to suffice.  The architecture of the Schoebrunn reminded us of our visit to Versailles.

After touring Schoenbrunn, we drove up to the Weinerwold.  We saw a beautiful panoramic view of the city of Vienna.  On the way back to our hotel, we stopped to get some refreshments.  We stopped at the Merkur Markt and the elevator opened right into the produce section.  Then Tom stumbled across the wine that he enjoyed at lunch so he bought 2 bottles.

We had a delicious dinner at the Weinerwold Restaurant followed by after-dinner drinks and blogging.  This was a great start to a wonderful trip.

Trip Planning Phase 6 - Hotel Booking

On Sunday, July 21, Lisa flew to Dallas.  Debbie and Lisa spent the next 4 days researching and booking the hotels for the trip.  This proved to be harder than expected.  Some of the hotels in Croatia were a little suspect?  We booked hotels in Vienna, Budapest, Zadar, Opatija, Rovinj, Trieste, Ljubljana and one more by the Vienna airport.  It took us quite a bit of time and research, but we were very pleased with our final decisions.  We even had some time to detail and map the sights we would be able to see in Vienna and Budapest.  The trip seems very real now and we are excited.  We can't wait until October gets here.

Lucky was our constant companion

Trip Planning Phase 5 - Move/Party in St. Louis

The next time we got together to work on the trip was the week of June 17-23, 2013.  Debbie and Bill came to St. Louis to help Fran move and to attend Geoff and Andrea's wedding reception/party.  On Friday, June 21 we all went to the Cardinal baseball game.

                On Saturday, June 22, we attended the reception/party at Helen Fitzgeralds.

In between all the moving, family time and partying, we managed to do some trip planning.  Driving distances were checked again and daily destination stops were agreed upon.  A stop near Graz, Slovenia at the Weutz Distillery was added.  Tom had seen a television program about this distillery and as it was on our route back to Vienna, it was agreed to add it to the tour.  This was the first chance Tom had to wow Debbie and Bill with the Croatian he had learned in his Croatian class.  We also went to Grbic's Restaurant for a sampling of Bosnian/Croatian cuisine.

Trip Planning Phase 4 - New Years Eve

One year later, another New Years Eve planning session.  Bill and Debbie came to St. Louis for the holiday.  The four of us went to the Kirkwood Station Brewing Co. to see the Grateful Dead Tribute Band, Jakes Leg.  We had a blast!  The next day we had New Years Day brunch at Dave and Kathy's.  This has become a tradition.  Even with all these happenings, we managed to get in some trip planning time.  At this point, the trip just needed some fine tuning and  tweaking.

Trip Planning Phase 3 - Wedding in St. Louis

The weekend of November 16 - 18, 2012, Debbie and Bill came to St. Louis for Bill's cousin's wedding.  In between wedding festivities, we spent many hours planning on our laptops and enjoying more wine.  Bill and Tom topped the planning sessions off with some fine scotch from our last trip to Scotland.  We mapped the distance between the various cities on our route, and selected our end-of-day destinations.  Now that we knew how long it would take us to get from one place to another, we had to decide which sights to remove.   We knew there wouldn't be time to see everything on our list.  We also discussed the sights that were "must sees" in Vienna and Budapest.  The trip was really taking shape.  Bill was able to book the first leg of our flight this weekend; second leg to be booked later.

Trip Planning Phase 2 - Dallas Opera

Tom and Lisa made a trip to Dallas April 20 - 22, 2012 to attend the Dallas Opera's performance of the "Barber of Seville".  The four of us had a wonderful dinner at The Old Warsaw before seeing the opera.  Many hours were logged in whittling the trip down to a more manageable size.  Bratislava, Dubrovnik, Split and Salzberg were eliminated.  It was agreed that Vienna would be the city to begin and end the tour.  All this deliberating was done with the aid of several bottles of wine.

Preliminary decisions were made on some of the sights we thought we might like to see.  We even had time to squeeze in "Shiner Sunday" at Love and War in Texas to hear Mark David Manders.