Our first day in Vienna was a busy one. We spent the whole day at the Schönbrunn palace, but there is a lot to do there! First we did a tour of the palace appartments and adjoining rooms. We had an audioguide that walked us through some of the royal family history of Austria, as well as having lots of decoration from the time it was a palace housing royals.

After we looked around the inside, we had a little virtual reality experience booked. It was sort of similar to the info covered in the palace tour, but with some cool VR effects.

Next we moved on to the palace gardens. To call them gardens feels a bit lacking, I think you could spend days there and not see everything. We started with a walk up the hill to a big arch that you can climb up and view that gardens from above.

Then we went through a labyrinth. It was pretty small, and fortunately we did not get lost. We had a quick break for lunch (bratwurst and potatoes, yum!), and then carried on with the gardens. We spent a couple of hours just wandering through the extensive park until we happened upon the palm house. The palm house is exactly what it sounds like, a greenhouse for palm trees and other large trees/ferns. We even saw a couple little frogs and fishies!

To finish off the day we had a dinner and orchestra concert. The dinner was at a restaurant down the street and was a three course meal. We had boiled beef broth with chives and semolina to start, the main was a roast beef with gravy, carrots and potatoes, and dessert was Apple strudel with whipped cream. It was all very tasty. The concert was held in the palace ballroom, which was a super neat venue. In addition to the orchestra there were 2 vocalists, and the whole concert was lovely. It was a busy day, but full of many fun things!