Quick Trip

While Valerie's friend Tiffa was in town, we decided to go on a short road trip...Road Trip Excitement!

Tiffa needed to be in Vienna on Wednesday and there are a couple of chateaus on the way to Vienna that have been on our want-to-visit list for a long time.

On Tuesday morning we picked up a rental car and headed for Mikulov:
where we ate some lunch.
Then we went on a tour of nearby Lednice Chateau:
before traveling a few kilometers to Valtice to see the outside of another chateau:
and eat some dinner.This whole time, strange things had been going on with the rental car. I thought it was an alignment issue after I checked (several times) to see if we had a flat tire. As we were driving back to Mikulov to the hostel we were going to stay at, the problem was so bad that the steering wheel was rhythmically vibrating and we started hearing a repetitive clunking sound from the front tires.A local family of good Samaritans noticed, and were kind enough to tell us, that we were down to one lug nut out of five on the driver side front wheel. Apparently the entire wheel was wobbling back and forth as we drove. From outside the car, it was an easier problem to diagnose:The man who stopped us was super helpful. We jacked the car up and "borrowed one lug nut from each of the other wheels, so that they were all just one nut short of a complete set and the car worked wonderfully the rest of the trip!

Mikulov at night.

The next morning we drove to Vienna and met up with Tiffa's friend Dan. We had lunch together and saw a little of the town, before we went our separate ways.

"Hang loose lane"

Val and I drug the boys through Vienna's Kunsthistorsche MuseumMy favorite part of this picture is that Vinson is so obviously bored with Caravaggio's David and Goliath David mit dem Haupt des Goliath in the background:



before we hit the road for Melk...

the site of a huge baroque monastery overlooking the Danube:
We stayed the night and went through the monastery the next morning.


We then drove through the scenic Wachau Valley between Melk and Krems and made our way back into Czechia and home.We asked Vince about his favorite part of the trip... "riding in the car". Not only is riding in a car a novelty for our boys, they had a portable dvd player in the back seat to keep them entertained. It's funny all we go through to have adventures and see interesting sites...
All in all though, it was a great trip.