You would think with one more parent present we might go back to smoother mornings. Nope, no such luck. We woke up relatively late, had a 10:00 a.m. checkout time, and had to hustle to breakfast. We had the standard argument regarding going to the “regular” place that had French Toast for Romeo and Gia, or someplace new. Ava just about lost it at the prospect of a third time at the same place, so we went across the street, ordered breakfast someplace new, and nothing about it was smooth. Romeo pouted and whined, and eventually when he realized that there was ALSO French Toast at the place we were currently at, he quieted down, but that took way too long. The waiter brought the food, and for whatever reason Gia realized that “oh, French Toast has eggs on it,” which she knew in the back of her head, but out of sight out of mind. This restaurant made the fatal mistake of creating a visual aid for her and when she saw some eggs surrounding the bread, she was out…no breakfast for her.
All around a huge pain just to eat breakfast. Than we loaded up everything into the car, another big task, and finally hit the road sometime around 11 a.m. I did NOT get to go to the honeycomb and fruit market one last time, so sad.
We finally got into Vienna around 2:00 p.m., brought our stuff to the apartment, and since everyone was hungry we set out for food. Apartment is great by the way, lots of light in the living room, and a darling little patio for coffee in the morning. So far everyone was wondering, “what’s the deal, this place isn’t so. special.” There’s nothing like a drive in from the suburbs of any city to make it seem way less glamorous. Outskirts of Vienna, officially nothing special in the way of European cities….basically the “cool” radius is much smaller than one would think.
We had a late lunch that was ok, and expensive, then we started walking toward the center (we are about 20 minutes on foot from dead center Vienna). Wouldn’t you know it, the skies managed to darken, thunder started, and next thing we knew it was pouring rain. The kids were all dressed like they were heading to the park on a super hot day (even then, it’s really questionable whether Lucia’s outfit was appropriate for anywhere.) We were all drenched, and cold…back to the apartment we went.
Then John and I spent almost 45 solid minutes sweating over the internet not working. We had a connection, and could get to certain websites, but not all of them, and we kept getting a pop up message to log in to the “Connect Box.” We were getting all hot and bothered over it, changing passwords on the modem, and getting super frustrated. We finally emailed the owner of the property, explaining the crisis because we just couldn’t get it. He texted back and told us to restart the modem. The one thing that I ALWAYS tell any of the kids, or anyone at the store…restart your modem and computer before you even BEGIN to problem solve. I always say it because it's the first thing John always tells me, and it's been drilled in. Who knows why we were so thrown off our game…new country maybe? We figured this must be a “new” problem. Nope, really all problems are just variation of the problems you already know about. Internet works fine now, no need to call Geek Squad.
So the summary of the day is we did and saw very little. We dealt with pedestrian problems, and with not all that much savvy--all within what is by all accounts one of the prettiest cities in Europe, but we haven't seen it yet. Nothing to get me terribly excited about Vienna yet, but I’m sure that will change tomorrow. I’m convinced that all we can handle is one action packed day, and then the next day has to be mellow—either intentionally or unintentionally. Today was definitely the mellow day following yesterday's action, so I’m hoping for more action tomorrow. OH, I can't forget to mention that one of my highlights was finding a yoga place literally just around the corner. There was one in Budapest too, but I could never get the times to work with the pace of the day (or solo parenting). I have higher hopes for Vienna though!
Signed, ME {lv}
p.s., the thumbs up from Romeo is because he is managing to go into the elevator of our building to get to the top floor without freaking. out, and that's a pretty big deal.
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