Nana and Grampy have come to Vienna for a couple weeks. The kids have been asking for three months “How long until Nana and Grampy come visit?” Elora has a big list of places she wants to go with them, so we have been working hard to check off all the fun that Elora wants to share with her grandparents.
The kids made beautiful posters to surprise Nana and Grampy with at the airport. We are so excited they have arrived! Luckily their first day here was Saturday night, so they got to go right to sleep and relax on Sunday so they could be over their jetlag and ready to play on Monday! It was freezing on Monday because Vienna is weird and has freezing cold days in August, so we headed to the Haus des Meeres (Aquarium) for our first favorite place to share with Nana and Grampy.
The kids were so excited to show Nana and Grampy everything, that they rushed through every floor and wore Nana and Grampy out by climbing too many stairs! Along the way we discovered a couple fun new areas that we had not seen before, got to see the cute monkeys up close, pet some fish, and found some fun pillows to relax on near the top of the building.
We went outside to show Nana and Grampy the beautiful view of the city. It was still pretty cold, so James (and Nana) didn’t want to spend very much time outside. It was fun to listen to the kids point out all their favorite landmarks in the city.
We went to McDonald’s for lunch. I know. We live in Vienna. The land of great cafes. But the kids were so excited to have grandparents visiting who would buy them Happy Meals. Can I just say, the new interactive menus are SO COOL! You can pick out all the side dishes for the Happy Meals and even pick exactly which toy the kids want. You can custom order burgers. I still won’t eat here much, but I had a good time ordering on the cool interactive menu.
On Tuesday we headed to the zoo. It is a bit difficult to get to the zoo right now with the U-Bahn construction. You can get off at the Schonbrunn station, but there are TONS of people getting off the train there. Then you walk in a huge sea of people trying to get out of the station, and it is a bit of a walk from that station to the zoo. The kids were a bit tired and hot by the time we got there and a little cranky too. Luckily once they were in the zoo a little and had fun animals to look at, they ended up having a really good time. Elora really wanted to see the insect house. There are multiple glass enclosures with different varieties of preying mantises and stick insects, which camouflage really well. The kids enjoyed trying to find the bugs. Oliver is always a bit creeped out by insects, but Marion enjoyed searching for them.
The biggest highlight of our day was the Orangutan exhibit, not because of the orangutans, but because of the multiple little frogs on the lily pads in the water. We have never seen frogs there. After counting the frogs, the kids noticed a water snake! Seriously! A very, very fast moving water snake. It was a bit creepy, but the kids loved watching the snake “swim”. It looked like it was slithering across the top of the water. It was definitely the best of the trip for all the kids.
Today we headed to the ZOOM museum to enjoy the Drachen Garten Art Studio before it closes for the season. The kids all had a great time playing in the clay today, and even enjoyed the outside clay and water play area. We got much messier than we ever have before, but James enjoyed having Nana there to help him out, and we had the greatest ZOOM worker today, Anna. She was super friendly and helpful with all the kids. Having a very interactive museum worker always makes the museum more fun for the kids, and today we really enjoyed our day and came home with some beautiful art creations.
The ZOOM museum has some really great mirrors in the women’s restroom. The kids never want to leave the restroom, they just want to stay and play with the mirrors. Don’t miss out on the best part of the museum if you go visit!
Stay tuned for more of our favorite adventures with Nana and Grampy in the days ahead!
