Will Dig Life

How different this summer is to our previous ones! 2024 , 2023 , 2022 , 2021 ... while there were a few rare cooler days in some of those years (though not a single one last year) it was generally stifling, 30+ degrees every day, we've had balmy mid-20's almost the entire time now. The first week was hot, but it has since cooled down and this has enabled us to do lots of things we just couldn't face in the heat of previous years! Museums On the weekend, we visited the Vienna City Museum and learned about the city's roots in antiquity, as well as noting quite a few artefacts I remember from my own youth - such as the metal whale, which had been outside a well known restaurant called 'The Whalefish' when I was a kid... I remember finding it quite fascinating, and my kids did too, seeing it in the museum! The next day, we visited Schönbrunn Palace - not the main Palace part, which I thought would be too dry for the kids, but the children's museum and labyrinth....

It's been over a week now since we arrived, and it's been rather a busy time so far.  Amsterdam Airport - a long wait, again Arrival & Place Flying out of Bristol again - because going to Heathrow is such a drag - we had to change in Amsterdam as there are no direct flights to Vienna. Having been stuck there twice before after missing connecting flights, once even overnight (and let me tell you, trying to sleep in an airport with two kids is not fun), I deliberately chose a fairly long connection time. KLM will offer a window as small as 50 minutes, but this time I went with about 90 minutes between arrival and departure. Keeping in mind that there's border control at Amsterdam thanks to Brexit, I thought that was where the pinch point might be. Well, it wasn't that - it was the long delay getting out of Bristol this time, which caused us to miss our flight again. That's three out of the four times we've gone through Amsterdam... so although annoyed, I was f...