Vienna at Christmas....with Children

Vienna, really shines at Christmas. It has every element-- twinkling lights, a dusting of snow, beautiful palaces and buildings--that we seem to crave during the holiday season. The long, dark nights have come so lights and cheer and hot wine help everyone feel better.

The city boasts a worldwide reputation for stunning architecture and livability, but it also shares a reputation for being, um, not exactly kid-friendly. While it is true that I think many locals might prefer to dine in the company of pets over children, this reputation isn't entirely deserved. One thing to remember is that elderly people and waiters here are pretty much unfriendly to everyone. Local or expat, young or old. It's an equal opportunity lifestyle. Yes, you might get some grumpy looks or even comments (but likely in German so you won't understand anyways) if you or your kids speak too loudly in a restaurant or on the metro. But, believe me, the perks of the city are worth withstanding the occasional glare.

Here are my recommended top experiences for Vienna in the winter. Since this is a winter list and it is always cold and frequently rainy/snowy in the winter months, I am not including a lot of outdoor activities. Believe me, you and your kids are likely to want to spend time indoors if you visit November-March. I lead with the markets so ignore that bit if don't visit during the Christmas season. I've also limited this list to things we have done. There are tons of other things I want to do (hello Schonbrunn Palace) so my list is likely to evolve. This should give you a good starting place for your Vienna explorations.

Drink a Punsch at a Christmas Market

This might be my favorite Viennese experience so far. Okay, maybe my overall favorite European experience. France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands....I like ALL of the markets.  And Vienna is chock full of them. My favorite markets for families are the University of Vienna market, the Karlsplatz market and the Rathaus market. You will almost certainly want to imbibe of a hot drink at the market, either alcoholic or non-alcoholic. They typically serve the drinks in mugs. You can keep the mug for a modest fee of 4 euros or return it. You will be charged the 4 euros as a deposit though, making the price of a drink 8 euros, which can be pretty steep when buying for a family. So, remember to bring lots of cash to the markets.

The University of Vienna Altes AKH market, situated in an old hospital, is enclosed in a courtyard and tends to be off the tourist path, making it a more local market. It's quite large with a petting zoo, pony rides and a children's area with a small ferris wheel, games and other rides. It has a curling area and plenty of places to have Gluhwein, apple punsch or kinder punsch. It also had several indoor restaurants where you can get fondue or traditional Austrian meals.

The Karlsplatz art market is right by a large metro station and the scenic setting features what I think is the most beautiful church in Vienna (and that is saying a lot).  It is a local artisan craft market. No made in China stuff sold here. Instead, it is guaranteed to be made locally so you really are supporting the local artist community. It has live music, tons of organic food stalls and a bit of a bohemian/hippy vibe. There is a playground at the park and an area in the middle of the market with a bunch of hay that kids can play in. There is also a petting zoo area.

The Rathaus Christkindlmarkt is the biggest and most commercial of the Viennese markets. You will find all of the normal market offerings, from gingerbread to sausages.  The best part for families is the large ice-skating area. You can rent skates there and kids skate free during the week. Even tiny beginners can try their hand as they have props to hold onto and a small area for little ones. The market also features a ferris wheel and a carousel.

Have Some Cake in a Classic Coffee House

I know, I know, it doesn't seem like this should belong on a list aimed at small children. But, no visit to Vienna would be complete for anyone, young or old, without sitting in one of the classic cafes and having a hot chocolate and cake.  My family's favorite is, hand's down, Demel. Now, mind you, this is not a laid-back, cuddly experience with a kid corner or anything like that.  The waitstaff wear tuxes and everything is served on real china. So, I'd say this is an experience for kids who are 5 and over. Or younger ones who are used to this type of setting. Demel was the chocolatier to the royal Hapsburg family and many say they actually have the original Sacher Torte (this is a story for another day). I do personally prefer their Sacher Torte to that served at the Sacher hotel. They definitely have the best hot chocolate of the fancy Viennese cafes. We have tested the other biggies. Plus, since they are a tourist cafe, they are accustomed to families and tourists.  And the upstairs area is non-smoking so it doesn't have the extreme smoky smell many Viennese coffee houses have. Just as a note, the etiquette in these fancy coffee houses is to order your drinks from your waiter. Then you go to the buffet of desserts and choose your offerings. The waitress there will hand you a little slip of paper with your choices written down. You then hand this to your waiter and he brings your desserts. This is a far from intuitive process so I wanted to make a note of how it is done:)

Explore Your Musical Side at the House of Music

Vienna's Haus der Musik is fun for all ages, even adults!  The fun starts with the musical stairs (conjuring up images of the movie Big) that you climb to start the exhibit. There is tons of information on the many musical geniuses that made Vienna their homes, as well as historical artifacts from their lives and eras. You can also try your hand at conducting the Viennese Symphony Orchestra (watch out, they can be a tough crowd) and exploring the science of sound. It is a fully interactive museum spread out over 5 floors.

Travel Back in Time

Okay, this is wildly cheesy, touristy and a bit over-priced, but perhaps the perfect way to entertain children who might not be as into exploring the Hapsburg silverware collection as you are. I rarely recommend things like this because they are far from an authentic experience, but my family did like Time Travel Vienna.  We found it an easy, fun and entertaining way to get a quick overview of the city's history.

Prater and Riesenrad

During the summer, the Prater is my daughter's favorite outing. It is an old-fashioned amusement park chock full of rides and junk food. Think state fair type rides, not Six Flags. There is also a massive park there where you can ride bikes and visit playgrounds or simply walk/run on the grounds. During the winter, many of the rides are closed. There is a small Christmas market open there by the ferris wheel and the ferris wheel itself is open. The iconic ferris wheel (the Riesenrad) dates from 1897 and takes long, slow rotations. A ride on it lasts about 20 minutes and provides you with great views of Vienna. There is a roller-coaster restaurant in the park where robots make and then a roller coaster automatically delivers your food. We checked it out for you and can report that it was a fun gimmick, but the food isn't that great. I think my bunch found it mildly enjoyable, but I can see it being quite exciting for younger kids who are really into robots and such.

Scotland Itinerary Part 2 - the Highlands

So, it has all been pretty mellow so far, but it is about to get crazier. After leaving Edinburgh, we started to really move and shake across Scotland.  We tried not to drive for more than 3-4 hours a day. We also tried to include at least one interesting place to stop on each drive.  We were also very lucky in that the weather was quite nice for this time of year.  We only had one day where it was rainy and foggy the entire day!  I think that is good for Scotland in October. If you are planning a trip, I think you really need a minimum of 7 days for Scotland. It would be better to have 10-14. We covered a lot of ground and saw what we wanted to see, but there are places I would have liked to have seen (Isle of Skye, sniffle) and places where I would have liked to have spent more time.

Another tip for saving money and time is to rent apartments with kitchens.  We always ate breakfast in the apartment.  I brought along a bunch of UHT milk, as well as cereal.  We bought eggs and bread at local shops.  We drank a lot of instant coffee that week because coffee makers are not de rigeur in Scottish apartments.  That said, I won't hold it against them. It is still a great place. 

We also skip touristy spots for more authentic locations. The Scottish Historical Society Explorer Pass was a steal for our family at around 100 euros. It covered entry to almost all of the castles and properties that we visited. Government run museums are almost always free and quite engaging and interactive. We didn't visit the Whisky Experience, Madame Tussaud's, the Edinburgh Dungeons or any other tourist traps beckoning in Edinburgh. I'm certain these are fun, but they are also quite expensive.

Day 5 -Stirling Castle and Inverness

We left Edinburgh in the pouring rain and I'm sad to say that it didn't get much better.  We stopped at Stirling Castle, en route.  While Edinburgh castle is a defensive castle, Stirling is more comfortable and luxurious.  It was the home of the Stewart monarchs and Mary, Queen of Scots gave birth to James here.  The castle has lots of actors throughout who play characters typical of the time period.  It is situated on a hill in a beautiful part of Scotland and should have views of the nearby Wallace Memorial. In reality, we spent the day more like this:

Ha!  Scottish weather. It is what it is.  Anyways, it rained all the way (3 hours and 45 minutes), but we made it to Inverness by nightfall. Our hotel was an apartment on the river.  With a super strange bathroom:

Chris demonstrating the size of the downstairs bathroom.

Inverness at night

Day 6:  Culloden Moor and Clava Cairns and the Highland Folk Museum
This was a great day.  Culloden had guides that involved the boys in a history lesson about putting on kilts, the Scottish clan system, warfare and a myriad of other topics. It did, however, start raining on us right when we started the battlefield walk in Culloden.  We ended up SOAKING wet.  Clava Cairns is a remote, untouristy spot with real standing stones. Y'know, like the ones in Outlander.  The Highland Folk Museum is free and absolutely amazing, for people with kids and without.  They have actors, such as a school teacher and farmers, who tell you about life during that time.  This also happens to be the place where the Outlander episode "Rent" was filmed.  I didn't bring along a pop-up Jamie, but I'm definitely a huge fan of the books and the series. 

Culloden moor, right before the rain came

Day 7: Inverness and Fort William - 

Now, we are getting to my very favorite location in Scotland.  We left Inverness and visited Urquhart Castle en route.  This is a ruined castle situated on Loch Ness. Nope, no sign of Nessie.  We looked. The drive itself was beautiful and took us toward Fort William.  The Fort William area and Glencoe, in the far west of Scotland, feel like the ends of the earth. It is isolated, remote and pristine. I would have loved to have spent more time here, and to have ventured further west to the islands there. I found a quirky hotel off the internet that was across one of the large lochs outside of the city. We could either drive 3 hours around the loch or take a 10 minute ferry that deposited us into the Inn's parking lot.  Um, we chose the ferry. The Inn at Ardgour is a quirky, old school and mellow inn, which was comfortable and memorable.  

Castle Urquhart and Loch Ness

Our view from the window of the Inn

Right beside the Inn

Violet was the only one keen on swimming

Day 8: Glencoe and Glasgow - 

 Our time in the highlands was, sadly, at an end.  We visited the Glencoe Visitors Center where we did a nature hike and learned more about the infamous Scottish massacre. Then, we drove on to Doune Castle - aka "Castle Leoch" (Outlander) aka "The Monty Python Castle" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This one was a huge hit with everyone. The audio guide was narrated by Terry Jones and the gift shop had coconuts they would lend you for photo ops.  Or, if you are Violet, you just carried them around through the entire tour. It was also a ruined castle, but restored enough to get a good idea of what it looked like.  The size was also quite manageable. It was definitely one of our favorite stops. Our hotel was on the outskirts of Glasgow and we saw none of that city.  It looked much bigger, modern and industrial than our previous stops.

Day 9: Return Home

We packed out of our hotel, enjoyed a huge Scottish breakfast (black pudding (blech), bacon, eggs, toast, potatoes, fried mushrooms and tomatoes), and hit the road.  We did stumble upon the remnants of Hadrian's wall perched atop the hills in Northumberland.  We didn't have time to stop for long, but we did take a few pictures. That afternoon, we boarded the ferry to return home.  

If you look closely, you can kinda/sort of see Hadrian's Wall. There isn't a ton left, but it is there.

The view of the Newcastle coast as we headed back to Amsterdam

Scotland Itinerary

So, one reason I wanted to resume blogging was to showcase some of the super fun itineraries I've created for travel in Europe. We are beyond thrilled at how easy it is to travel here. And it is relatively inexpensive compared to Beijing. By that, I mean that food and hotels is EXPENSIVE. But, the travel costs are low. Especially if we can drive. And attractions are often free or low-priced as well. There are family passes available and many museums here are free for children or students. My Scotland itinerary was developed with the help of some friends who had already been there, done that. I really appreciated their advice and feedback. It made the trip much more cohesive and interesting. I'm breaking this post into 2 installments: Edinburgh and then the Highlands.

Day 1 - Ferry from Amsterdam to Newcastle. Boarding time is 2:30-4:30, ferry leaves at 5:00. So, I didn't know many people that had done this, but thought that it would be great if we could take the overnight ferry so that we didn't have to drive all the way through England to get to Scotland. Newcastle is only a few hours from Edinburgh so this gives us a big head start. It turned out to be a wonderful idea. The boat was clean, they had family rooms for 5 and the food was good albeit very expensive. They even had a play area for children with a ball pit where Violet made friends. We all slept very soundly and arrived the next morning ready to go.

Chris' reminder in the car so we could remember where we should look.

Tight fit, but yes, 5 people will fit here. There is another bed above mine where Chris slept.





Sunset at sea

Day 2 - arrive Newcastle 9:30 a.m., drive to Edinburgh (3 hours and 14 minutes), Stop at Melrose Abby (covered by explorer), arrive and check in to
The Knight Residence By Mansley Serviced Apartment.

This day is pretty self-explanatory. We bought an explorer pass for the family, which covered admission to many of Scotland's sights including Edinburgh castle. This was well worth it. You also get to skip the lines and just walk right up with your pass. Melrose Abbey was beautiful and isolated and a really nice respite from the drive. Once we got checked into our hotel - which was amazing and one that I highly recommend - we headed right down the street to Mary's Milk Bar for hot chocolate floats. Those were every bit as delicious as you might think. We did a bit of grocery shopping that evening and looked around Old Town. Chris and I debated heading out after we got the kids settled for a whisky flight, but were just too exhausted!






Day 3 - We woke up early to tackle Edinburgh Castle. We even stayed to hear them fire the "One O'Clock Gun" across the city. We walked along the Royal Mile, ate at a place called Frankenstein's (kid-friendly but unremarkable) and then headed to Arthur's Seat for a hike. Now, one thing I hadn't fully accounted for is the fact that it would start getting dark every day by 3:30. We were at Arthur's Seat around 2:30. There appeared to be a lengthy path up, but we were concerned we might not make it before sunset. Alex, with my support, then decided that we could take the path less traveled. You know, the one that went straight up the side of the mountain. This was a fast, terrifying, extremely difficult way to get up the mountain. But, I'm happy to say that we all made it. Whether or not this was an appropriate way to get up the hill is the subject of some debate. After seeing sunrise, we headed home and stumbled across Violet's favorite park anywhere. It had a zip line and she could have spent hours there in the dark and cold. The rest of us were not so inclined. We grabbed fish and chips and headed home where we collapsed.














We were all sweaty and red and asked a hapless passer-by to snap a pic





This was really much worse than it looks here. By the end we were on our hands and knees grabbing for grass.

Day 4 - We spent the morning at the (free) National Museum of Scotland which did a good job giving us a bit of background into the place. It also had a dress-up room and lots of nature stuff for kids. We had lunch near the Elephant Bar - this was where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter - because the actual Bar was too crowded to seat us. We then wandered about Greyfriar Kirk to attempt to find the Tom Riddle grave.That evening we did a Mercat Ghost Tour of an underground vault where people in Edinburgh once lived and worked. When the city build bridges, these vaults were covered up and unused for centuries. It was interesting, but not our favorite thing. I think we would have preferred a straight up history tour without the ghost stuff.



Alex is a big fan of Irn-Bru



The remnants of the old Edinburgh city walls







This little dog sat by his master's grave for 14 years



Dress up at the museum



This sweet store had the BEST tablet!