Vienna, day 1: Some parts of the world experience autumn!

This little camel didn't make it into our post about the Abu Dhabi airport, but it's available to come home with anyone who wants it for the low, low price of $21000. 

Zoë and I both managed to sleep on the flight from Abu Dhabi to Vienna—the flight wasn't quite full so we had an extra seat in our row, which was nice—but we were still fairly exhausted when we arrived. The City Airport Train is out of commission for the time being, but they have busses running the route, so...after a bit of misdirection...we managed to get on the bus to head into the city. Zoë was excited to be on a bus because, to her memory, this was her first time on a bus!

I was thrilled to look out the window and remember that there is autumn in the world! To quote Anne of Green Gables, "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers..."

We don't have much of a hint of October in Doha yet (or ever?) but it's lovely to see the golden trees here. 

Here's Zoë standing by the open track in the U-Bahn:

I was trying to explain to the kids how metro stations are in other places—open and dangerous. We're quite spoiled in Doha, where every station is enclosed and every train lines up accurately to the doors and everything is clean and bright and there are never any drunk people. But the children were most perplexed by the open-track concept (and Zoë is still a little freaked out when the trains come rushing into the station).

Hadis was kind enough to meet us at the CAT station to escort us to the apartment. I'm not sure we would have made it as seamlessly through the door in our "stayed-up-all-night" stupor if she hadn't been there to lead us. She left to go to the lab and we settled in for a little nap...which turned into a longer-than-intended nap (which was fine). 

Here's Zoë looking out the window into the courtyard:

Uncle Patrick came to pick us up to run some errands in the afternoon, see his lab, and take us on a few sightseeing adventures.

Here's the view outside of his (temporary) office space, where he's currently squirreling away refreshments for her defensio celebration:

He took us to Central Cemetery after we swung by his lab. This is where Mozart is actually buried, though no one really knows where he's buried... It was a little bit of a walk and we were a little bit hungry so we popped into the store and grabbed some pastries to eat on the way.

Here is the monument for Mozart, where an angel—exhausted from its continual search for Mozart—rests:

And here we are in the cemetery—the trees aren't even that fall-y yet, but I'm still happy we get to see them:

There were little dishes set out with rocks for bees to clib in and enjoy a little drink:

And I found this statue of a headless child rather creepy (spooky season is upon us, and yet...we feel rather unspooky where we are):

We went to the shopping district to look for a few things—Zoë was excited about this sign because from a distance it looked like there was no apostrophe, so it was TARDIS (like from Doctor Who):

We of course walked past St. Stephen's Cathedral:

I was still very excited about the trees...so I took a few pictures of the walkway...

Andrew will be so proud because I actually bought a new bag—it's a little backpack style thing that Uncle Patrick and Auntie Josie both swear by. It's big enough to fit a water bottle and whatever else you might need to pack around the city, but it's low-profile enough that you're not going to bash into people with it when you swivel around (and they're fairly cheap, so Zoë got one as well):

This view is from the top of IKEA, where we picked up a blueberry pie because Patrick saw it and wanted it (we had actually been talking about pie—or the lack thereof—in areas outside of North America when we picked out our pastries earlier and Patrick was talking about how the pastries are good but he would give just about anything for a good piece of pie and then we walked through IKEA (for the roof experience) and—boom!—there was a pie right there in the freezer section!). 

It's Thanksgiving on Monday, so the pie was timely.

Here are a few more views from IKEA's rooftop:

You can actually order food at the IKEA cafe up there and eat on the roof, looking out over the city. We didn't do that, but we did go back to Patrick's apartment for pizza and pie (which was just as good...and we could take our shoes off and get comfy, so was perhaps even better).

He made us stop at the Heisse am Gürtel for a picture on the way home from the metro:

And that about sums up our first day in Austria...