We chose Cafe Sacher as our breakfast location on our final day in Vienna. Again, we thought there would be a line, and, again, we lucked out and were seated right away. This one turned out to be the most kid friendly, as they gave LS a whole Hotel Sacher themed coloring book and colored pencils! Both LS and I had the waffles, while Mr. Strange opted for eggs. And, of course, we had to try the famous Sachertorte!
After breakfast, we walked a short way to the Haus der Musik. This interactive museum has four floors of activities and things to see. The stairs leading up to the first floor were styled like a piano and played notes as we went up. LS enjoyed watching a video of the Vienna Philharmonic playing, then we rolled virtual dice to create our own symphony. On the next floor, we learned about sound, and LS (who was obsessed with sound waves for a period) loved seeing a visual representation of sound waves. We also discovered that she can hear frequencies that Mr. Strange and I cannot! We then used VR to create our own sound beings, or Clongs, and then watched them interact with each other, creating their own unique sounds. The third floor was mainly dedicated to rooms for great composers, such as Mozart and Beethoven, but we didn’t see much of this, as LS declared it “boring.” The top floor had the Virtual Conductor, where you could instruct the symphony to play faster or slower, depending on how you conducted them.
We then headed back over to the MuseumQuartier where we had 1:30pm reservations at the Zoom Kindermuseum for the metal workshop. Zoom is not a typical museum, where you can wander in anytime and see everything; you have to register in advance for one of their age-appropriate areas. For LS’s age, I could have opted for the Ocean (which I think is basically a play area) or the Atelier (which had the metal workshop). I thought she would enjoy the workshop more.
Our group had mostly English speakers, so all instruction was in English. They explained the different stations we could chose to work at, and then we were free for about an hour and a half to explore.
The first station she chose to work at was building sculptures out of large bolts and various metal pieces. We then moved on to a station where you could shape metal paper in various ways and we got to take home our creations made here. The third station was all about magnets; there was a box of metal pieces that you could attach to the wall or a car with magnets, as well as a couple stations where you could use magnets to play with iron fillings. This was her favorite! In fact, we never made it to the last station, which was punching holes in bottle caps and screwing them into wood.
We then strolled around, taking some photos of various landmarks.
We finally ended up on U-bahn and took it up to Prater to ride the giant Ferris wheel.
Honestly, we didn’t think the Ferris wheel was really worth it. LS enjoyed it, but our gondola was crowded, and, for how expensive it is, you only get to go around once.
We then continued into the Prater for a bit. LS got some cotton candy and rode a few rides before we ran out of change and small bills and decided to head back for dinner. The midway is huge though, and we didn’t explore the whole thing. You could easily spend several hours to a full day here.
Our trip was coming to an end. We had a final dinner of LS’s choice (cheese pizza) and then packed up. Our flight was at 10:30 the next morning, so we woke at 6:00 am and were on the U-bahn to the Wien Mitte station by 7 am to catch the 7:37 CAT to the airport. See you next time, Austria!