Sunday I was no longer in charge of the cover plan, which will be such a load off of my pate. I did monitored another test, which continues to be an adventure. I scored several exams and then left school early to go and see the eye doctor. He said my eyes were healthy and I just needed to wear my glasses to see long distances, which is not my favorite, but I will do what I need to do.
Sunday night was rugby training for the kids, as usual. There was a bit of a skuttle about the Under 10 team that was broken up earlier in the season. Stuart stayed behind to see if he could help resolve some of the issues, but it as futile. It seems that the team Jack used to play with is not thrilled to be playing up with the next level. It’s good to know that sport parents are the same everywhere.
Once I was home with the kids, they showered, ate and hit their beds. I followed them just after 9.
School was relatively productive on Monday. It’s amazing the things you can get accomplished when you are only doing what is on your job description. We are still testing, and we are doing our best to get ready for National Day celebration, which is the countries biggest celebration of the year. Typically after National Day holiday the students don’t return until after the new year. We have grades 4 and 5 testing this year so at least those students will need to return in December. We shall see about the younger students.
After school I went to collect some things for the winter festival. Once I was home, the kids and I went to the grocery store to buy some things for their cleaning staff at school. The school collects items and gives them to the cleaning staff just after National Day. We can’t call them Christmas gifts, but that’s what they are.
We got home, had dinner, the kids showered and headed to bed. Stuart and Sean came home from training and I had dinner ready for the three of us.
There was more testing on Tuesday. These tests are killing us. I hope they serve a purpose somewhere along the way. One of my teachers was accused of cheating with her grade 1 students. She was able to justify the grades fairly well. She stated her children wouldn’t stop talking during the exam, there were not enough tables in her room to spread them far enough apart, and they didn’t have test dividers. These were all very legitimate excuses. It was a good argument. We shall see if anything comes of it. I continued to grade exams. They have to be graded within two days of administration. It’s a stressful time for all of us.
We decided to eat dinner at the club after the kids trained. Cathy and the Richardsons joined us as well. It was intended to be our last catch up before the long National Day holiday.
Wednesday we had the last day of our grades 1-3 exams. After the exams the school was all a buzz with the National Day celebration. The kids performed songs and dances for the mothers. There were a lot of people at the school and everyone seemed to enjoy the afternoon. The students were all gone by 12:30 pm, and the teachers followed shortly after that.
I ran a few more errands before heading home. Once I was home I lounged around for an hour or so. I really thought the kids would want to hang out with me before I left for the weekend, but they chose to play outside instead. Stuart took the kids to the club for the evening so he could train. Millie cried and cried because she didn’t want me to leave. I’m sure she was over it as soon as she was running around at the club. I left for the airport around 6 pm.
I left my car at my friend’s house and got a cab to the airport. I arrived around 8 pm and met Gina at the Al Dhabi lounge, where we relaxed and waited for our flight. It is by far the earliest I have ever been to the airport before a flight. Our flight wasn’t leaving until 2 am.
Once in the air, our flight to Belgrade, Serbia, was almost 6 hours. We had an hour and a half layover, then flew to Vienna, Austria. We arrived at 8:15 am, Vienna time. We were greeted by a driver who took us to our hotel. We stayed in the city center at the Do & Co Hotel. Of course, we were too early to check in, so we dropped our bags and headed out to explore the city. We had a map that told us of 7 Christmas markets. Our goal was to visit all of them. On our first walk we found 2 Christmas markets. The shopping began. We found some adorable ornaments and even found a shop with some unique gifts for Christmas. We had a bite to eat and then headed back to the hotel.
It was snowing when we arrived.
Our first market experience.
The window in the hotel bar, looking out at St Stephan’s Cathedral.
We got back to the hotel around 1:15 pm and had a warm beverage in the hotel bar, awaiting our room to be ready. At 3 pm we finally got into our room. We faffed about and then headed back out to the streets just before 5 pm, but it seemed much later because we had gone back three time zones and had very little sleep the night before, plus, it was already dark.
St Stephan’s Cathedral
Christmas stalls
Pretzels for dinner!
It was blustery outside, but the streets were busy. We shopped at the Christmas market right across the street from our hotel and then hit the area where there were permanent shops. We bought some items for gifts and then decided to get something to eat. We bought some roasted candies nuts and a giant pretzel and called that dinner. We then decided we could safely call it a night. We headed back to the hotel. I showered and quickly fell asleep just after 8 pm.
I woke up at midnight because the television came on for some reason. I quickly fell back to sleep. Then was up for good just before 6 am. Gina and I chatted and checked Facebook and just did a whole lot of nothing.
Once we were up and ready to go, we headed out and down the shopping street by our hotel. Our goal was to get our vouchers for the hop on/hop off bus, but we got a bit sidetracked because they didn’t have their office open until 10 am, and we tried to get the tickets just before 10 am. Ugh! Prior to that we had stopped for a coffee and strudel before getting too far into the day.
Since the bus wasn’t an option after coffee, we continued on to the Naschmarkt where we met our walking tour guide of the market. Once we met her, we took a stroll through the market where she informed us of the history and origins of the different vendors. It was very interesting. We were able to taste some of the local foods and experience some of the local spices. It was terrible fascinating and well worth the time.
The produce was beautiful!
Everyone enjoys a gherkin!
The Santa is filled with berry ‘punsch’. Yum!
After our time with Erica, our guide, we hopped back on the bus. We got off at another market, the 4th of 7 we hoped to see in our short stay in Vienna. We ended up touring a cathedral that allowed us to go up into the dome. On my walk back down my thighs started cramping up, because of the cold I assumed. They hurt so badly. I almost stumbled the last few steps. It was weird!
The ceiling.
The outside of the cathedral.
We ended up riding the bus back around to the Opera stop, where we had started earlier in the day. We then walked up the shopping street back toward our hotel. We shopped along the way, as you do, and just enjoyed the festivities. We then headed back into the hotel to warm up and rest for a bit. Then back out on the street to find dinner. We settled on brats and pretzels (again) as that was the easiest and really what we wanted. We brought them back to the room and enjoyed our meal in front of CNN.
Our walk back to the hotel
Saturday morning had us up and out around 9 am to visit ST Stephan’s Cathedral. It was magnificent. I continue to be amazed at how these gigantic structures were built and remain erect, so many years ago when technology wasn’t even around.
After the cathedral, we headed to Hop on/hop off bus. We took it to the famous, giant Ferris wheel just north of the city center. From here you can get a bird’s eye view of the city. The area surrounding the Ferris wheel is like a large carnival. The ride was 10 minutes long. The cars held 20 people and were enclosed, much to our delight. After the ride we indulged in some ‘punsch’. I chose lemon and Gina chose apple. We had to have some freshly fried chips to go with it as not to get too ‘punschy’.
We returned to the bus and rode it to the Belvedere museum where we found the Gustav Klimt painting, The Kiss. We also found some fabulous sculptures that forced us to be silly. After the cultural stop, we headed back to the bus and hit the 6th of the 7 markets. We resigned ourselves to the fact that we were not going to meet our goal of hitting all 7 markets. But we gave it our best. The 6th market was by far the largest and the busiest, as it was Saturday evening.
The Kiss
Silliness!
A tree made of sleighs.
Another market!
We wandered down the road to a recommended cafe called Cafe Landtmann. It was a beautiful building and they had really established the essence of moving people in and out of their cafe. We waited no time at all. We had a delicious meal of Wiener Schnitzel, a cheese platter and a slice of apple strudel. It was the only real meal we ate in Vienna and was worth the wait.
We left the cafe and headed back toward the hotel. We were in search of this adorable hat shop we had seen on our first morning in Vienna. In the end, we found it but sadly it was closed. I guess another hat was not in our future.
We were back to the room just before 8 pm, and after a stop off at a local sweet shop. We got our items packed up and ready to depart the following morning. This has been a wonderful trip and exactly what I needed to get into the holiday spirit
Before going to be, I got a message from Stuart, reporting that his team had won the Plate Final at the Dubai 7s, which is a HUGE deal for Al Ain Amblers.
The winning team!
Stuart actually scored two tries over the weekend. This is one of them.
The weekend was successful for everyone, even Elfvis.
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