Yet Another Castle

We decided to spend our second day in Vienna visiting Schloss Schönbrunn, otherwise known as Schönbrunn Castle, the original summer castle of the Habsburg Emperors (and Empresses).

Being the crazies that we are, we looked at it on our city map, and decided to walk there.

Does anyone else think this sign looks like it's trying to imitate the Keep Calm and Carry On posters?

On the topic of posters, I thought this one was super cute.

We passed some really interesting buildings.

And FINALLY neared the castle.

The castle grounds are absolutely enormous, and very very well kept.

Here you can see the castle sitting on the top right, and the gravel road in front of it disappearing into the distance.

And then I turned round and took a photo of the same road in the other direction.

We decided to take the plunge and pay for a pass to get into the main attractions at the castle. Namely, the imperial apartments inside, the privy garden, the maze on the grounds, and the Gloriata, the building you can see perched on the hill in the distance here.

After exploring the rooms in the castle, we needed some sustenance, so popped down to the castle restaurant and enjoyed some Austrian pancakes with stewed plum and apple sauces.

We really like the well dressed pedestrian road signs. Hats essential.

Oh and then Tom almost got eaten by a lion again.

We then ventured into the privy garden.

This was the fairly spectacular ceiling in one of those gazebos.

Next step was to attempt to explore the rest of the enormous gardens.

Well, this isn't a garden, but the rest will be!

Oh, and this is Tom pretending he's a castle guard.

We found yet another newlywed couple.

Here's Tom almost walking on the grass. *gasp*

How awesome are these trees, trained to grow as a wall!

The park was very popular with runners. I'd certainly make use of it if I lived nearby!

This wooden contraption is used to help trim the trees in straight lines.

We finally made it to the maze. Tom went one way, I went the other.

I made it to the little observation tower first. There's Tom still in the maze.

We moved on to the kids' playground afterwards, and Tom went straight to this contraption.

I took a run-up and hopped on this spinning thingie. Tom decided to give me a hand. That's when it all went bad. Watch for yourselves.

After I'd recovered, we kept walking towards the Gloriata.

And climbed to the top for a very commanding view.

Here's Tom holding up our map of the castle grounds, showing the route we'd taken through them.

We decided to have a little rest and enjoy the view (and sunset) for a while, once we were kicked off the Gloriata (not literally, thankfully) at closing time.

We eventually decided that we'd relaxed enough, and made our way back down towards the modern world again.

It would appear that dogs have always been the same.