I started the day looking for a bookshop to buy a guide of Vienna. We visited Thalia at Wien Mitte, and managed to find the English version of Lonely Planet Vienna, after much difficulty. Before the end of the day, I would have lost it. What a great start.

In my first full day in Vienna, I wanted to make sure I do the ‘must dos’ of the trip – Schloss Belvedere, for the art, and Stephansdom.

It was a rainy day, so I figured being indoors would be great. Unfortunately, it meant that instead of getting a beautiful brilliant white picture of Schloss Belvedere in the sun, I only have a grey picture of it.

I really enjoyed the art – I had only been vaguely aware of Gustav Klimt before (oops), and not at all of Egon Schiele, and didn’t know there were so many other Austrian artists. I spent 5+ hours in Schloss Belvedere, most of it in Upper Belvedere. But we also visited Lower Belvedere and Belvedere 21 (contemporary art). It was wonderful in many ways. But also stressful. I got told off more than 5x because of the kids – they were too close to the paintings / walls, too excited, too shady looking (at some point, they were playing ‘hide and seek’ with a museum guard who kept following them around because he thought they would damage the art). And once, Big Boy O accidentally stepped on a rusted metal scaffolding that he didn’t realise was meant to be art, and got told off the guard there, and who insisted on calling his bosses over to have a look.

I bought a 1000-piece puzzle of “The Kiss” as a Christmas project, and a deck of poker cards with Gustav Klimt art print for Big Boy O, which he specifically requested and wanted as his souvenir from the trip.

Visited Stephansplatz / Stephansdom (apparently the 10th tallest church in the world!!). It was featured on the Lonely Planet Europe’s front cover, which was one of the factors, which helped decide Vienna as a location for our holiday.

On the way to dinner, Baby-F peed in his pants. He had said he needed to pee, and he managed to hold on most of the way, but end up peeing in his pants, just as we got to the cafe I was intending to have dinner at, at Vollpension on Schleifmühlgasse. Just great.