Sunday, January 2, 2011

Austrian Christmas Eve

Well we did it, our vacation is over and we're safely back in Bucharest. .

Now I'll get busy and blog all the glorious details this week or however long it takes me.

Christmas Eve in Vienna.
We spent the whole week enamored with all the incredible gothic architecture, that we put off all our christmas shopping till Christmas eve.  I brought over all Harlow's presents from Romania because I wanted to buy her a specific baby doll line from France that matched the stuff she already had.

WELL  Christmas eve arrived and we headed out to buy gifts for one another. We had planned to split up for an hour and then meet up for lunch.  When we arrived at Mariahilfer Strass which is that long street with the lights hanging over it and shopping galore.
 The red balls are all lights at night



Every single store is closed till after the New Year.  WHAT??  No Santa?
Ok, ok let's just try to make the best of it and find a nice place to have lunch.

Heyyyy... notice something missing from the pictures?  Where did all the snow go?  Great all the snow has melted too.

We find one of the only places open on the strip for lunch, it's packed full of people and smoke.  Make the best of it right?  We sit down order crazy overpriced pasta and then Harlow proceeds to throw an all out monster tantrum.  Jason suggests we leave, go back to the hotel and research a good place for dinner.

Walking home we noticed this giant building with a lit up tye dye ceiling overlooking the entire city.  After closer observation we realized it was a restaurant, perfect! Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom and it's open on Christmas.
When I called to make reservations for Christmas night the woman on the phone giggled and said they didn't have any openings for dinner till January 16th.  Ugh I give up, Jason it's your turn.

After a couple hours of searching on the internet Jas finds a Chrsitmas market in an amusement park thats open till 9pm.  Grab your jackets and let's do this.  We hop on a trolley and head out to the other side of town, eager to turn this night around.  Ohhh I so just rhymed.

The trolley comes to the final stop which just so happens to be our stop and we lug the stroller out into complete darkness.  Um Jason where did everyone go?  Seriously we were in the middle of nowhere just a tree lined street with no one around at 8:30 at night.  Out in the distance we can see a huge ferris wheel so we just start running towards it full speed.  Our lungs started to ache after about 20 minutes of running from the cold air but I think we were both to scared to stop running.

Eventually we came upon a dark old amusement park, come to find out it's over a 100 years old.  It was humongous and there were creepy clown statues around every corner.  This picture may not look scary but just imagine darkness all around and not a soul in sight.
We walked through the entire park with just dim lighting.  The rides were like nothing I'd every seen before, tons of haunted houses and just attractions that looked like they belong on a record album.
Was this Christmas or Halloween?

Finally we made it to the market which was closed but we saw a couple people walking out of the ferris wheel ride so we figured ok it probably has an incredible view.  We were the last people there and without cash so they guy was about to turn us away but then said ok go ahead ride's on me. YES!  So we climb aboard the biggest ferris wheel I have ever seen the cars were each cable cars with dinning tables in them.  Of course they gave us the ghetto one with graffiti all over but hey beggars can't be choosers right?

So up we go, and higher and higher and holy wind storm!!!  I was clutching that bench so tight my knuckles were going to explode.  The windows were rattling and Harlow was wiggling out of my arms and we just kept going higher and wind got louder.  Then when we got to the very top and they turned off the light, OH GOD they forgot us up here!!! NOOOOO

Ok they didn't forget us but I thought they did and began freaking out.  But we realized that we were the last one up there and they had started closing each cable car down and turning off the lights.

After surviving the wheel of death we began hunting for a train home.  It was late everyone was grumpy and Christmas Eve felt like a bust.  It took us a while to figure out how to get home but once we found the right train we ran for it and missed it by a fraction of a second.  Mother @#$%!!  So we sat down on a bench and just started laughing.  We laughed so hard it made the whole day.

Guess it was just a Griswald day for us...

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