I promise not to always be this long winded!! :)

View from the top of the Ferris wheel towards the 'downtown'

Front of the Hofburg

SchmetterlingHaus

Street "Statues": real people earning money

Below is another post with a few more pictures. Not sure how to do the pictures most efficiently. Maybe someone with more blogging experience could show me the ropes? :) I'll also put some pictures in this post.

Anyway... today was fun. Evan, Julia and I had our 1st good night's sleep since last Monday night. We all slept about 10 hours!!! Eric didn't do as well and had another few hour wake up at 3am..but he managed okay.

We went down to the Ringstrasse (downtown area) and walked around seeing some more sights. There are plenty of street entertainers, which the kids like. "Statues" coming to life when you drop money in their buckets (picture) and soccer freestylers were the faves.

We also took our first stroll through some of the Hofburg. These are the castles, building, etc.. from the most dominant 'rulers' of Austria (The Hapsburg) in the early 1900's I believe. The front stairs where Hitler stood and announced his 'reign'.... we explained this to Julia and then after a few minutes she announced she "hated all these castles because the evil man lived here"...so we had to re explain a bit. :)

We went in the Schmetterling Haus (Butterfly house) -- which was SOOO beautiful. Eric and I almost passed out and within minutes Eric had "swamp ass" and had to leave - SOOOO HOT in there!! We allowed Evan to go back in by himself for 15 minutes. It was no surprise when he came out and told us everyone in there knew him as he got about 4 huge butterflies to land on him. That kid can make friends and/or an impression (good, sometimes bad!) anywhere!

Speaking of impression, next Evan saw some young men playing soccer and asked them to play (in German)...these guys were freestyle soccer dudes too. I hadn't seen this before...they actually just do a bunch of amazing dribbling tricks with the soccerball. It was CRAZY! Evan juggled with the kid for awhile and then Christian gave him is 'postcard' which was like a baseball card but a postcard size. These guys are sponsored and everything. I took some video of the guys doing it for money on the ringstrasse and I will try to also attach below. (taking too long - I'll try again later!) Pay particular attention to the short conversation Julia and I have in the background of their music playing. She cracks me up. Anyway, Evan said "I can't take it anymore, can we please go buy a soccer ball tomorrow".... so we will definitely do this - cannot wait for our air shipment. I think we will try to find him a 'pick up' futbal game tomorrow!

We also went to the Prater Platz, which is a huge park, amusement park, etc... It houses the oldest ferris wheel in the world, which we rode. It is a great view, slow ride in enclosed carriage cars. I was pointing out the unbelievable views the kids and saying something like "can you believe we live here now!" for which they replied "we can't wait to ride the log ride!" because they couldn't take their eyes off the views of the amusement park! Very funny! The rides there were CRAZY... not necessarily big, but really crazy - stuff you don't see in USA because I think liability issues/insurance/etc... Big swinging upside down kinda stuff...high on my barfometer.

FYI....So far, my main complaint about Europe/Austria/Vienna is that you can't just ask for a glass of water. Usually you have to pay for a water (gas or no gas (carbonated or not))....I did learn the word for tap water but it didn't work tonight. I'll keep trying :)

We meet tomorrow at 3pm with the owners of the flat we love, hopefully we will get a little closer to some deicision making then.

On a bad note, little Jules came down with the crud tonight and she is now running the fever. Hoping it is just the fever bug and not the barfing bug too!