Tom in Wien and the Visit of the Parents

Occasionally, people just plain can't believe what I write on this blog and have to come and see for themselves what's going on here. Of course many of them claim they have come to see me, but am I better than Vienna? We may never know, but for sure the best thing is the combination of us both!

My parents had been to Wien before, so I could dig into some slightly less conventional/ extra tourist attractions in addition to the general Innenstadt/ Kaffeehaeuser/ Brauerei round that I tend to base my initial introduction to Vienna tours on (of course due to the variety available here, I can and do amend this itinerary regularly. Book your places now!).

Among other things we finally got to the (conjoined!) arms and armour museum and the old musical instruments collection. Favourite instrument (you can use handsets to listen to them being played) was definitely the 'Viola de Gamba', at the time called just the 'Viola' as our modern version wasn't so popular. They look beautiful with their strange dropped shoulders and sound great, a differently tuned cello with way more strings. Check one out below!

Among the other things on the itinerary was a trip to the area of the Bisamberg, where we accidentally found an entire wine festival in progress! Result.

And having promised wildlife, I was extremely gratified to find that the Lainzer Tiergarten offered up excellent views of wild boar, a black woodpecker, a slow worm and another queen ant!! Photos of most of these are found in the album accompanying this post, mixed in with a few of the blue and distant hills of the Wienerwald because who doesn't want to look at that???

Der Tom