AUSTRIA - DAY 11

Oh my God, the sun is shining. Wonders will never cease. We headed to the Opera House for our excursion to Schloss Schonbrunn and tour of Vienna. We climbed aboard the bus and headed off snapping photos of the various buildings pointed out to us.

After that the bus headed to Schloss Schonbrunn and we toured the palace. This palace belonged to Marie Teresa and her husband Francis I. We were sure we had seen several of the paintings before, like in Innsbruck, but it was fascinating learning about this woman who had sixteen children, Marie Antoinette among them, loved her husband dearly, and ruled over a huge kingdom with an iron fist. All the faces of the children looked the same and when we questioned this we were informed that all the royal line had to look beautiful (most had small pox so their faces were scarred), so the artist drew one face and used this as the basis for all the people in the painting.

We learnt that one of her daughters had 24 children, no twins among them and died at 42. Basically she spent her adult life pregnant or giving birth. Wouldn't that be exciting. They never washed and women going to the toilet would have a servant put a chamber pot underneath her and she would relieve herself standing up. Imagine the smell of these people. Ellexis asked why they had fans and I think after learning about their hygiene habits, the fan is pretty self explanatory.

We decided not to return with the tour and headed instead into the maze garden attached to the Palace. The girls had a great time running around the mazes getting horribly lost. There were four mazes, each different which was great. In one maze, they had different games or challenges. Ellexis and Angelique tried really hard to climb to the top of the pole and hit the bell. They will need to work on their upper arm strength before they can accomplish this. Pasqual on the other hand, clambered up like a monkey.