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Schönbrunn - The Royal Palace of the Habsburg Family
Feb/06/2007 01:01
The old King's palace in Schönbrunn, Vienna is one of the most luxery places from the old days. Its interior design, furniture and art is well kept and a must to see for every visitor. Outside the palace, you find a huge park, including a zoo and greenhouses. Last but not least, there is also the Gloriette that has been completely renovated and turned into a wonderful coffee place with a beautiful view over Vienna.
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Seefeld is a very small town in the Austrian alps. It has only a 3000 people but nevertheless is one of the biggest cross country skiing area in the world. It got more than 10000 guest beds allone, hosted Olympic games and is international recognized. 
You find plenty of tourist all year long, in summer for hiking and in winter for skiing. The surrounding mountains are just great and the small town offers a wide range of activities, (snow) hiking, mountain biking, ice skating, cross country and alpine skiing, ski jumlping and paracliding in both seasons. People are very friendly and kids are welcome at all places. Plenty of Spas can be found as well.
and traditional tyrolean food - you would be surprised, it is far ahead of the nouvelle ciusine -, a beautiful landscape around you and ancient buildings in a modern town. Well allmost all is right. You would expect snow in the middle of winter in the alps and not a 20 degree and people hanging out with t-shirts....you can't have everything in the warmest minter in the last 100 years or so.
Even though located in the beatiful landscape in the middle of the alps, Watten in the Tyrolean mountains has not to offer much. Ans still, millions of Japanese visit this village year by year. You ask why? Simple. You will find the headquater, production site and museaum of Swarovsky there. Most likely, the finest and most famous crystal cutting company in the world. Lately they opened their own museum, just next to their plan and are attracting tourists from all over the world. Well, more precisely, 99% are coming straight from Japan....or that is how you feel. 
Actually the museum does not have a lot to offer and I would consider it a waste of time and money to pass there. The exhibition changes once a while but is less than worthwhile to see.The most impressive parts are the entrance, an artificial waterfall coming out of the mouth of the face shaped artificial mountain. Real great. Apart from that, I would recommend the showroom. You do not pay entrance fee for that but if you have your girlfriend with you it will cost you a furtune.....I talk out of experience here.
After getting bored hanging out on the beach, drinking bacadi coke and I-guess-I-forgot, we had the great idea to have look inside the country. Damn good idea but damn wrong moment. We found out after ten minutes drive south away from the coast. The climate immediately changed and we were beaten up bu the hot air. Yes, we had aircon in the rental car, yes it was the equivalent of a middle class Mercedes in Europ and the twoof us had real troublesto squeeze into this tiny rotten vehicle with loud air instead of cold one. Well, maybe it cooled down from a 45 to a 40 °C but you would not realize.......
He claimed 23 kids and only oine wife! My first impression was that counting is not tought in school. I guess, they replaced it with negotiating. And after we got physically stopped to buy some colorful fabrics - they found out, we are tourists! I still wonder how.- and being convinced that it it is better to shop before (because once you leave, it costs 90% less) so we can enjow running around in this ancient site and 42° C loaded with stuff, we finally made it to the entrance. 
Really exiting, it is the 3rd biggest, still standing amphitheatre in the worls and it does not look small at all. From a distance of 2 hours flight and 5 hours drive, it is just a little bit smaller than the one in Rom. We just came before midday so w ecould enjoy the dangeons underneath. There is no light but it is pretty cool. Some of this tourists do like they are wild animals and enjoy to scare other tourists. Well, they had major succes with kids and older people. And, who had thought, they can run......All this has been built to proove that the Romans are still alife and kicking. It did not really help convincing the Berber but on this day, I was really happy to see this impressive building.
One side is pretty well intact and it seems that it was recently renovated....from the 70 onward, just over 30 years as we found out later. Well, considering the heat, the siesters, the distance to the next real town and the tourist season that all obviously stops the works, they are more or less on schedule. Next century they start the next renovation program. BUT it was worth and they did a quite good worK as you can see from the pictures.
Working hard to see every little corner of the amphitheatre made us thirsty (and hungry but a quick look at the available food convinced us to starve a little but longer - it is just 2 hours from the coast and clean restaurants). We sat down in the bar just accross the site and enjoyed the view.
There is nothing else to see in this little town. Actually there isn't anything. A few shops (some really lovely ones) had opened for the tourists and there is a parking spot. Yes, you pay for being protected...but this is absolute common in big towns these days. We have meters, they have old fashioned personal service. 
Umbracle" is a green partly tropic garden on top and the parking spot underneath. I actually could not figure out what the idea behind all this massive concrete is. Well, it makes great pictures..... on the right, half of the "Hemisferic", a huge IMAX theatre. The movies range from cartoon to great natural catastrrphies...a great experience for everybody. It is just a pity that the choosen movies are quite short.
