DAY 18

Our Contiki tour guide, Dan (or Dangerous, as we call him), took us into the city and gave us a short walking tour. He took us to all the historical buildings and explained some of the Viennese history to us. We got lucky enough to see some of the show horses walk by, which Dan said he had never seen before. In Vienna, they teach these horses to ‘dance’. They are trained to jump up and down and perform tricks that horses don’t usually do. We thought we’d invite them to a football game to do the Jump Around with the Badgers, but they were busy with their trainers. Our walking tour ended when we arrived at the Swarovski Crystal store. We saw a 100,000 Euro ‘Waterfall chandelier” (That’s $130,000!) which was featured in Ocean’s 11. We saw a lot of really cool original crystal jewelry items, but most of it was too expensive for our budget. Audrey was still able to find some souvenirs, of course. After the Swarovsky tour, we had free time for the rest of the day. We did a little shopping before grabbing lunch. This was the first day on the tour where it was cold and snowing, but we enjoyed the snow, as it was one of the first snowfalls we’d seen this year. You can imagine how fascinated the Aussies were since most of them had never seen it snow, and it is summer for them at home right now. We decided to warm up a bit by going into the Shmetterling Haus, a butterfly house, where we watched some drunken butterflies fly around. (They feed their butterflies fermented bananas). After that, it was time to meet up with the group for our Schnapps Museum tour! A man in the Fischer family invented the Schnapps recipe in 1895 and he has never shared his secret. The recipe has been passed down to his son, and his son’s son. The great grandson gave us our tour. Of the 15 factories they once had, we were in the only one that survived the bombings of WWII. He explained to us everything about the Schanpps from their sparkling wine to their Absinthe. After his little history lesson, we headed to their bar to sample our choice their 20 different types of Schnapps. We were each allowed 3 shots, but who was keeping count? ;) After warming up in the Schanpps factory, we headed back to the hotel and took it easy. We grabbed some schnitzel for dinner before heading to bed.