Coleman Blessings: Sunday June 19

I forgot to add this pic to the Szecheyni Baths post...normally I would NEVER let him leave the house like this. He had fallen asleep before we were ready to leave so we let him finish his nap before heading out....therefore we were late! I decided he could look like a white trash baby on the metro...but is this not the cutest picture ever? Look at those curls!!!

Ok so next up was Vienna! We didn't really have "plans" when we got to Budapest, but Holly and I had talked about taking a little side trip somewhere. Vienna is closest and we decided that might be easiest with our tiny world traveler. We left really early Sunday morning, Levi is super happy to be on the train! These are a little blurry...I don't think I had woken up enough yet to realize my camera was still set from the night cruise. He's waving at mommy. :)

Our best attempt to get a pic....Levi was wild!

Vienna is a BEAUTIFUL city!!! It's extremely clean and every single building is gorgeous. It's hard to pick out the "important" ones because they're all so pretty. This is headed towards Hofsburg Palace.

And the palace!!!! This was the residence for the Habsburg Royal Family who ruled over this area of Europe. And go figure, there's scaffolding on the front. Grrrrr....

This first "museum" was the royal serving pieces. It was rooms and rooms and rooms and rooms and rooms of china. Right up mom and Holly's alley....me and Levi could have done without it. :)

This was cool...one of the kings would choose peasants once a year to come to the palace and be treated like royalty. The tub was for he and the Empress to wash the peasant's feet.

And maybe my favorite picture from the trip!!! Levi sitting on the grassy knoll in front of the National Library of Austria on the Hofsburg Palace grounds. Just gorgeous!

The courtyard of the Palace. The weather may look nice but we were freezing our tooshies off!

Then we went to the Sisi Museum. Empress Elizabeth is highly regarded in that area. (Budapest as well, they have an Elizabeth Bridge.....except they say Erzsebet) She lived a tumultuous life that ended with her being assassinated. She did not like all the hooplah that came along with being Empress. You'd never know it by going through the Royal Apartments....she seemed to be pretty high maintenance if you ask me! We couldn't take pictures in the Sisi Museum or the Royal Apartments. :(

Then we made our way to the Imperial Treasury (Schatzkammer.)

Imperial Crown, Orb, and Sceptre of Austria

These were linens used for royal baptisms. They were INCREDIBLE!

ooooohhhhh....sparkles!

The Crown of the Holy Roman Empire

This bowl supposedly caught the blood of Jesus Christ as he was crucified.

Getting VERY cold!!! Levi all bundled up.

And now it's raining. :( We were dressed like we were sight seeing in hot Texas weather, it was like 60 and raining. Good job checking the weather girls. Thank goodness I packed the rain cover for the stroller!

Next up was St. Stephens Church. WOW. Is all I can say. All of these old churches sort of look the same, yet they are all beautiful in their own way. This one is MASSIVE!!! What do you know....scaffolding again?!?! At least they attempted to make this scaffolding pretty, haha!

Amazing pipe organ. They were having mass while we were there and the organ was playing, it was awesome!

Hey sweet cheeks!

I found this quite hilarious. This is the general "emergency" exit sign in Budapest and Vienna (and probably other places.) It's not all politically correct like in the US. It's more like "get the H$L* outta here!

Opera in Vienna

Ok so on our way to this next landmark we took a little detour. :) AKA...Emily was in charge of navigating. We didn't know where we were going, I looked at a map and said we need to go THAT way, and started walking. On the upside we got to see Belvedere Castle! (Which I didn't take any pictures of)