Vienna, Day 2 - If you're ever in a strudel crisis, we now have the hotline.

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We started out our morning at a cute Viennese coffee shop called Aida, it was very cute - we had delicious Austrian coffee and strudel. 

After that, we headed out - first stop, the Schonbrunn Palace.

Unfortunately, when we showed up, it was raining... again.

But, our spirits were still high - since the gift shop was nearby!

And, lord knows, we love gift shops.

We got some postcards of the rooms inside the palace, which were beautiful - it convinced us to go on the tour!

We headed for the entry to the palace, and got our tickets.  We decided to buy the "Classic Pass" which included the long tour of the palace (which we heard was a must), along with the Privy Garden (described in the brochure as a "romantic arbour" - lucky us), entry to the Gloriette (a beautiful greenhouse atop a hill with a beautiful view of the palace and the city), as well as... drumroll please... the APPLE STRUDEL SHOW!!!  But, more on that later.

Once inside the palace, we got some very cool, very touristy headsets - but, we are dorky and we love them, because they have all the great history!

We got learn all about the families from the Hapsburg dynasty, including Maria Theresa (with 17 kids, one of them being Maria Antoinette) as well as Franz Joseph, with the famous wife Sisi.

We learned that Sisi was Franz's cousin - sweet. 

We also saw the room where Napolean stayed while sacking the city, and the room where Mozart played a concernt for Empress Maria Theresa when he was only 6! (This was Jen's favorite part.)

Abbey's favorite room was the Great Gallery, an enormous ball-room with panelled gold ceilings and incredible candelobras on the walls - Abbey wants to be filthy rich one day so she can have a room like this, if only just to dance and twirl around in.

After the tour of the house, we headed outside - lucky for us, it had stopped raining!

We first walked to the beautiful "romantic arbour" we had read so much about.  Romantic, no - but Abbey and Jen were ok with that - sharing a bed was enough.

We were able to climb to a viewing tower over this beautiful garden, with a great view of the palace from the side as well as the gardens below.

From there, Abbey convinced Jen to hike with her to the top of the property to see the Gloriette, a gazebo - if you can even call it that.  This enormous "palace" at the top of the hill was built solely as a viewing platform over the gardens, the palace and the entire city of Vienna.

We enjoyed the view, took some pictures, and then headed back down for the best part of the day...

THE STRUDEL SHOW!!!

We were so damn excited when we bought our tickets to see the show that we arrived 20 minutes early, just to get front row seats.

When we walked in, we were handed a free sample of apple strudel - it was delicious!

During the show, the studel man (as we lovingly refer to him) explained in german and english how to make strudel from scratch!

He made some dough, and then showed us how to stretch it by throwing it up in the air - he was a STRUDEL MASTER!

He then told us the "secret ingredients" to the apple mixture - they use cinnamon, raisins, lemon juice, sour apples and a shot of rum.

He then has some audience participation to roll the strudel, so the crust would be flaky and in layers.

At the end, he gave us all a copy of the recipe and told us that we should try to make it at home.

And, just in case you mess it up or have a strudel emergency, he gave us the STRUDEL HOTLINE, manned 24 hours a day to answer all your strudel related questions.

In case you have one right now:

+43-1-24-100.

After the show, we headed to the cafe at the palace - because even though it was probably more expensive than eating elsewhere we were starving, and it looked so delicious! 

And, since it was the same kitchen as the strudel master, it must be great.

Abbey ordered a Vienna Sausage with Saurkraut, potatoes and spicy mustard - it was delicious.  Jen had some incredibe Austrian pancakes with stewed plum jelly - also delicious!

We still had a few hours back in town, so we decided to head downtown and go to a museum.

We got in a taxi, and the driver took us the most ass-backwards way to get to the museum - and then added an extra $2 charge and claimed to have no change.

Abbey hated him - Jen turned that hate in to creativity, and is now convinced that he was working undercover for a Polish organized crime cartel, and was a hit-man who picks up targets in his cab.

Abbey had to admit, that was a much better story than just saying he was an asshole.

We were dropped off (finally) at the MuseumsQuartier downtown, home to dozens of museums in one little area. 

We decided on the Leopold museum, so we could see the famous Klimt paintings.

Beyond Klimt (which is admittedly, a little strange) we also got to see the work of famed Austrian Egon Schiele (which was even stranger).

We saw an exhibit by Alfons Walde, which was great - beautiful paintings of the Austrian countryside (again, we sang the sound of music).

Also, we went to an exhibit by Adolfo Winternitz, a man born in Vienna who move before WWII to Peru, where he spent the remainder of his life - his modern art was incredible, the colors were so vibrant - we both loved it!

We walked back to our hotel, passing many beautiful buildings and parks along the way - and then headed to the train station for another go at this "sleeper car."

Earlier in the day, we had both been saying that Asian tourists really bothered us (if you are Asian and reading this, know that we love you - and we hate to generalize - but, seriously, when your people move in packs of 40 and plow us over to get a picture, it tends to piss us off a little).

Well, just to spite us, God made sure that we were the only Americans in the entire train car - no germans, no austrians, no italians... only asians.

Abbey kept singing Ozzy Osbourne's song Crazy Train with new lyrics... "We're going off the rails on this Asian train."  It was funny, maybe you had to be there.

This time, there were only four of us in the car, which was nice - it meant more room.  Also, we had the top bunks, which at least felt more spacious.

The girls in our train car were actually very nice - at least we think they were, since none of us spoke the same language. 

But, they were smiling and giggling, which we took as a good sign.

We finally made it back, after a much better night's sleep (thank goodness for Austrian pharmacies and their open-drug policy - and for their magic sleeping pills).