We started our day early with breakfast out.  We wanted to be sure to introduce Mina to Cafe Landtmann — a place we’ve often enjoyed, especially for their decadent coffees and delectable desserts (even for breakfast), as well as their fantastic location and view of the Burgtheater and Rathaus.  We left the house early enough that on the way out, when B got a little too exuberant in the courtyard, we had to remind him that it was early on a Saturday.  And when we got to the restaurant, we were among the earliest diners.  We enjoyed an excellent breakfast, including breakfast dessert (strawberry tart, truffle cake and even ice cream).

We came home, sent Dan out to procure groceries for the week, and got ready for our major adventure of the day — Schönbrunn.  We braved the chilly, occasionally rainy and very, very windy weather to enjoy the festive Easter market and to show Mina how grand the palace grounds are.  With the kids in the stroller, we even made the walk (for the first time!) up the hill to the Gloriette above the palace to take in some amazing views.  After exploring the entire market and a lot of the grounds (fighting the wind the entire way) which made for hours and hours of walking, we went home, windblown and exhausted.

But, our time with Mina is waning, and opportunities are not to be missed, so we rested at home only briefly before heading out AGAIN to one of our favorite dinner destinations.  It’s an easy trip — two strassenbahn rides should deliver us to the front door of the restaurant — which sounded like exactly our kind of trip, given our busy week and tiring day of sightseeing.  But, it was a long wait for the “right” strassenbahn . . . and the other one stopped only a couple of blocks from where we needed to catch the second one, so we just took the first one that came by.  Which would have been fine, except that moments after getting off of our first strassenbahn the wind whipped up, the skies opened, and we found ourselves in the middle of a Viennese monsoon.  We scrambled under an awning in front of a cafe and huddled there, avoiding the rain, trying to figure out the best way to get where we needed to go without getting completely soaked and frozen while we watched the train that we needed pull up to our intended stop, just a few blocks away, yet too far to reach in time.  Sigh.

The rain slowed down, so we took off, jogging through the puddles, to the train stop.  We caught our train, got to the restaurant and enjoyed a lovely dinner.  After dinner, we went out to catch our train, only to see it driving away.  It had left early.  Lovely.  Again, it was raining . . . and also kind of snowing.  It was cold.  It was windy.  It was late.  We were all tired.  Again, we huddled beneath an awning of a closed shop to wait the 10 minutes for our train.  (I am so grateful that I have a wonderful, warm, safe home to come back to.  I could barely make it 10 minutes outside in that weather.)

We did it.  We made it home, safe and sound and without further event.  On the way back into our courtyard, I reminded Benjamin to talk quietly because it had gotten so late.  It’s a long day when you have to give that warning at the beginning AND at the end of your day.  My goodness, I am tired.