30/06/2023
This morning was a slow start to the day, Lachlan even finally slept in past 06:00. We packed the bags, it was “new home day” again. Eloise said “goodbye Alexa” and we checked out. We had the majority of the day in Vienna but were still recovering from Schloss Schönbrunn yesterday. We had been inspired by some artwork in the living room and headed that way. At the end of the street, we walked towards the side of Belvedere Palace and down through the pretty Belvedere Garden.
The Belvedere Garden was vast, after Lachlan got a quick photo with Nali and one of the many sphinx statues he was off. Nali did not stand a chance.
We had found Kaskadenbrunnen, Belvedere-Garten the photo from the apartment. It was worth the hot walk. Would have been nice if we could have had a dip in it.
If the palace gardens were not impressive enough we found another one of our favourite robotic lawnmowers.
It was already burning hot in the sun, we kept rolling downhill towards Lower Belvedere
until we found a park bench to rest our legs for a good hour and watched Eloise and Lachlan tear up and down the paths playing shopkeepers with Nali.
Once we were all feeling energetic again we pushed our bags back up the hill past Muschelbrunnen to check out the grand entrance to Belvedere Palace.
It was a pretty sight from the south end of the garden, we had just missed the Apollo command module touch down.
Turns out it was the 300th year of Belvedere which admittedly we had only become aware of a couple of hours beforehand.
We were enjoying the walk through the parks, well the shaded parts at least when we bumped into a well timed cafe. We started with schnitzels in Vienna so it was only fair we finished with them too. We think that is how it works. Lachlan was fast asleep, the heat quickly zaps that boy, Eloise was half with us still.
With full bellies, we were back out in the heat and had made it to the Museum of Military History partly because it was close. As we approached the building it looked like we had made a great decision. We liked the look of this building!
After passing through the cloisters the whole castle museum opened up into a grand square.
Liam took Eloise off in the pram to admire the SAAB 35 Draken, look at those sweet sweet variable-sweep wings. On the opposite end of the ground, there was another jet, amazing. However, Eloise made it crystal clear to Dad if he took her all the way down the other end she would not go into the museum ever. So that one was sadly off the table.
The Saab 35 Draken is a Swedish fighter-interceptor developed and manufactured by Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget (SAAB) between 1955 and 1974… The Saab 35 Draken is known for, among other things, its many “firsts” within aviation. It was the first Western European-built combat aircraft with true supersonic capability to enter service and the first fully supersonic aircraft to be deployed in Western Europe. Designwise it was one of, if not the first, combat aircraft designed with double delta wings, being drawn up by early 1950. The unconventional wing design also had the side effect of making it the first known aircraft to be capable of and perform the Cobra maneuver. It was also one of the first Western-European-built aircraft to exceed Mach 2 in level flight, reaching it on 14 January 1960.
Before we had even seen anything in the museum we were blown away by the building itself. The ceiling paintings were epic.
We made our way through the displays, there were loose wooden floor plates tesselated together that rattled, Lachlan was loving the loud noise he could make on them.
Lachlan enjoyed the French war balloon that had been captured in the battle of Würzburg in 1796. He sure does love hot air balloons.
There were some enormous paintings with breathtaking levels of detail.
We headed outside to inspect the tanks but did not last long in the sun so ducked into the Naval wing where there were impressive models.
On the way to the train station, we spotted what Liam is officially calling the Scottish thistle, looks a bit closer than our last sighting. Must be time for the long route home.
The train was packed, it was a Friday evening. Luckily we had booked table seats so Eloise and Lachlan had a bit of room for shenanigans. Eloise had a short micro nap which got her through. Lachlan was having fun jumping between laps.
At 21:00 we arrived back at Budapest-Keleti and Lachlan had finally hit a wall. Eloise was worried her wee Glaswegian bro was overheating and kept blowing on him to keep him cool, such a good big sister.
Grandpa Dave’s mate, Budapest’s most reliable transfer dude, was waiting for us on the platform. Eloise who decided she was just powering on at this stage was very impressed by the service. Once we were all in the transfer van Eloise was saying how good it was and again mentioning “Nali it’s lucky, it’s not Becca, Becca takes a really long time”. Not sure if you are ever going to live that one down Becca. Grandpa Dave’s mate dropped us off at our hotel which had one hell of a name ‘Vecsési Rendezvényközpont és Panzió’. Super Mum had done it again transferring Lachlan from train to van to pram to cot while keeping him asleep, Dad was probably also busy doing something.
Wow, what a museum! 😲