Vienna Day 2

The snow that I had enjoyed the prior day in Vienna quickly turned into an issue as overnight the precipitation turned into rain, and the snow into a wet, muddy slosh. While I have had quite a few freezing cold days, today was truly the first miserable weather day that I’ve had. Not only was it wet and cold, but my beloved Allbirds shoes are not exactly weather resistant, and I’m not planning on picking up winter boots for another week or so - my feet were soaked. Didn’t stop me though, and I trucked on towards Schoenbrunn Palace.

The palace itself is massive, and had a pretty neat little Christmas Market out in front (if you couldn’t tell by now, they are EVERYWHERE this time of year over here) - the tours for the day were all sold out, which was fine, as there was lots to explore on the grounds. The Palace itself sits on a massive park that must be absolutely tranquil in the Summer/Spring. It reminds me of something out of Game of Thrones, where dastardly plans are hatched over a lovely stroll through statue laden grounds. I’ve included a picture below of a row of trees, not because its the best picture in the world, but the tidy trim illustrates just how manicured the grounds were. I had planned on making the trek up the hill to the structure that can be seen in the distance in a few of the photos, but the path was covered in about 2 inches of wet slush, and my feet were already wet and frozen.

Instead I wandered around the grounds, which are massive enough that there was no way I could have covered everything there even if I had tried. After a while I approached a really unique looking steel structure with windows everywhere, so naturally I went to investigate. Turns out, it was a massive greenhouse, called the “Palmenhaus” (Palm House) - originally built in 1882 (although there were earlier iterations of it, and the current structure was bombed and rebuilt in WWII), it has something like 4,500 plant species and is one of the largest greenhouses in the world. Not only did it fascinate the botanist in me, it was a very welcome reprieve from the bitter cold outside!

I wish I had been able to open another day in Vienna, but alas, Prague was calling.