I wanted to maximise my last day in Vienna and do at least some sight seeing given my flight was only late afternoon. I had already stored the heavy luggage and items at the storage lockers at Wien Hauptbahnhof the night before, so that I would have minimal packing and getting ready to do in the morning before starting our final day. I had already fed them the first round of breakfast (cereal) and asked the boys to share the last bit of yoghurt, while I was doing the final packing and checks. Instead of sharing nicely, they start counting how spoonfuls of yoghurt each had, and debating the relatively sizes of their heaps of yoghurt. Soon I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown – like, seriously?!! They can’t cooperate for the greater good, when I asked them to?!

After we finally packed up and left the AirBnB, I took the train to Schwedenplatz to get Tram 1 from Platform B, to circle the Ringstrasse as recommended by the Lonely Planet. I stopped off near Karlskirche (St Charles’ Church), and we visited it. I had seen the dome of Karkskirche from our early days in Vienna, and had wondered what it was, and finally the mystery was solved. The interior of Karlskirche was beautiful – the fresco on the dome looked really three-dimensional.

Then we made our way back towards the Hofburg to visit the Weltmuseum Wien (Neue Burg Museums, per Lonely Planet), which we had wanted to do on Wednesday, but it was closed. Big Boy O was interested in the the Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments (Sammlung Alter Musik Instrumente), and I thought they might also be interested in the Arms and Armour museum (Hofjagd und Rustkammer) and the ethnographic museum – all covered under the same ticket.

I dragged us all to take a quick stroll in the Volksgarten – the boys played tag or some such, while I tried to find a place for lunch. And then I found a great lunch spot – Cafe Schwarzenberg – “one of the last remaining grand Viennese coffee houses on the Ringstrasse” from 1861. We got there just about in time to get their breakfast menu for our ‘main’. But I didn’t manage to get the breakfast pancakes for the kids as dessert. So I ordered the lunch pancakes instead. Even though I asked for them not to include the apricot jam, and just wanted the pancakes plain, they put powdered sugar on it (why???) and so I struggled to get the kids to eat it, and had to eat some of it, which annoyed me, because I had already used my calorie budget on a Viennese coffee with ice cream and thick whipped cream.

En route to Wien Hauptbahnhof to catch the train to Flughafen Wien, I managed to even squeeze a quick pitstop to take a sunny day picture of the Schloss Belvedere.

It was really nice to have a productive last day in Vienna, despite the hiccups, to end my first solo holiday with the kids, before flying back to London.