Today was a great driving day from Wien (Vienna) back to Stuttgart. We were up at 7:00 done with the best breakfast from any hotel that we have had so far and out of our hotel at 8:00. We had to walk with luggage to our underground parking area about 5 blocks away. We get there and the thing is all locked up. It says (per Gary's pretty good German) open 24 hours a day. But it wasn't???? Well it is freezing outside, really it is, probably 25 degrees and we are sitting on a park bench trying to figure out what to do. Very little traffic, pedestrian or otherwise and here we sit. I am glad that I have a sweater on with a big sweater with a hood over that and a pea-coat with a big scarf wrapped around me, oh and a hat. I found one of my toe warmer thingys that I always keep as an emergency in the bottom of purse and put those on.
Finally I got up and walked down about 200 yards to a beautiful restaurant and the nicest young man came all the way back to the garage and he figured out that through another entrance just for this reason (early arrivals) you could walk down these steps and with the code off your ticket enter the last 4 digits and the door opens! Can you believe the hospitality of this place? We couldn't. After lugging the stuff down the stairs and finding the car and the way out we were about 1 hour off schedule but still in shock that someone would do that for us.
We got to see some countryside this time as it wasn't as foggy as the ride over, but mostly I read the little book on Vienna that I purchased and found out all sorts of things about this place. Austria is really located more in Eastern Europe than Western from looking at it on the map as it is bordered by 4 European East Block countries. To the West is Switzerland and Germany and to the south west is Italy. After WW ll it remained part of the Western Countries and in 1955 it became it's own country and Vienna has the 3rd office seat for the United Nations Organization, the other 2 are New York and Geneva. There is a lot of history here, they have survived a lot of wars and different leaderships. Napoleon had his headquarters here for awhile too. Ok now I am getting into to much information needed....can you tell I am captivated by this place?
Speaking of captivated, tonight Madeline was dressed as a butterfly in this pink two piece outfit that was warm (the most important thing). Cold here but not as cold as it was this a.m. waiting for the parking lot to open. She brought us home lots of candy of which Annie got first pick.
It is time for me to go read her a goodnight book, usually this is Strawberry Shortcake, the same one Annie liked when she was this age. Life is good.
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