Visiting Vienna: May 29th – June 3rd

As you have should guessed from our destination, we are not going diving.  While that might seem a little out of character for us we had both enjoyed our trip to Prague in 2008 and decided it was finally time to head back to Europe.

We started our trip with a flight to Heathrow in cattle class (of course), but exit row seating (and some medication) made sleeping on the overnight flight a little less uncomfortable.  During our short layover, we kicked off our vacation with the first of what would be very many pastries, Sardinian Golden Bread at Strada.  It’s like French toast but made from a sweet bread with honey and fruit.  Yummy!!  (Pastries and photography would be primary themes for this trip).  After this delicious breakfast, it was off to Vienna via planes, trains and a 1/2-mile walk along sometimes cobbled streets while dragging too much luggage.

Working our way through three locked doors, and watching Bill hump the bags up a spiral staircase, finally led to our recently renovated AirBnB apartment.  It was built in 1900, only $90 a night and less than a ten-minute walk to the Innere Stadt, home to most of the city’s architectural treasures.  In other words, while a little odd in that European way, it was perfect for our needs (and anyone that knows Dessa knows that she is not the easiest to please when it comes to accommodations).  The only real complaint was that Bill had to twist his shoulders around the sink when visiting the tiny room that held the toilet.  🙂

Maria Theresa Square

On our first full day, we struck out early in the general direction of the meeting place for our scheduled bicycle tour.  Within minutes we stumbled across the beautiful Maria Theresa Square in the Museums Quarter where the Natural Histories Museum and the Kunsthistorisches (Art History in case your German is a little rusty) Museum mirror each other across a plaza full of gardens, sculptures and fountains.  We were amazed at the sheer volume and variety of decoration on and around these massive buildings from the late 1800’s. Out came the cameras, and we wasted all our available time taking photos till we had to hurry on to our tour.

Bicycle tours are our favorite way of getting a quick history lesson and an overview of the city sights.  It also allows Bill to get oriented in the city and tune his (mostly) great sense of direction.  We get tips from the guides on where to eat, when to go to certain sights to avoid the crowds, as well as some interesting cultural insights and facts that can’t be found in guide books. The four-hour tour took us to at least a dozen of the most prominent sights around the inner city including a strange apartment building called Hundertwasserhaus Village.

Hundertwasserhaus

The artist/architect for this project did not like straight lines or 90 degree angles, so the building looked crazy.   (apparently even the floors and walls in the apartments are not square or flat and level).  At our stop at the Hofburg Palace, our guide shared a tidbit of Viennese revisionist history.  In March 1938, Hitler stood on the palace balcony to inform a cheering crowd of several hundred thousand that Austria was now part of Nazi Germany.  Today, Vienna attempts to pretend that they had been unwilling victims of the Nazi’s rather than willing participants. The guide suggested with a shrug that it was a national shame and they preferred to keep this part of the past buried.

Schonbrunn Palace

Day 2 was our tour of Schönbrunn Palace which is on the outskirts of the city but thanks to Uber getting there was painless.  This baroque palace has 1,441 rooms with vast gardens (possibly the real reason Dessa wanted to visit – flower pictures?), and in the past a 435-acre hunting park.

It is 300 years old and was the imperial summer residence for the Hapsburg monarchs.  The last of those was Maria Theresa, Austria’s only female ruler. She gave birth to sixteen children, with 10 surviving to adulthood, the most famous of which was Marie Antoinette.  Tributes to Maria Theresa can be found throughout the city.

We arrived at Schönbrunn early to try to avoid the crowds and tour groups and the heat of the day while we wandered the gardens to get some photos.

Neptune Fountain and Gloriette

The rear of the palace looked out over a wonderful sculpted garden leading to a fantastic fountain featuring Neptune and several cavorting minor deities.  Past the fountain and up a steep hill was a beautiful building called the Gloriette with views of the palace and city beyond (this was often used as the dining hall for breakfast, which in my mind is a very long walk to get some cereal).   The palace grounds included mazes, a zoo, an orangerie (a huge greenhouse used to protect the plants during Austrian winters), a botanical garden, great walking paths with towering hedges, and a rose garden with the most beautiful roses I have ever seen. They were so perfect, in every color, and some were so heavy with petals they hung face down (don’t worry, I made Dessa cull her flower pictures down to only her favorites).  The palace tour was one of the best we have ever done.  The included audio guide provided just the right level of historical detail and was well paced to keep us moving.  The rooms and furnishings themselves had been perfectly restored. I have been on a few of these types of tours, and they can come off as a little shallow and shabby, rather that the grand rooms they once were.  I especially loved the chandeliers.  Each one was massive with many different shaped pendants, all working and sparkling. Photos were not allowed inside the palace so you will have to go see it for yourself.  We spent a full day exploring and did not see it all.  We highly recommend it!

Vienna is known as The City of Music, boasting many of the great composers: Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Strauss, Brahms, Haydn. We booked evening concerts at St. Charles and St. Anna’s churches.  Both were compilations of a few composers and they were wonderful.  The acoustics in both churches were amazing.

One of the concerts included a soloist with a fantastic voice and featured an amazing violinist. You can get a taste in our video. On our next visit, we will definitely be attending more concerts.

Vienna is also known (to a lesser extent) as The City of Dreams because it was home to Sigmund Freud, the world’s first psycho analyst. German is the primary language, but almost everyone spoke English which was very nice.  The signage however was not in English but thanks to Google Maps, Google Translate and the Vienna Metro apps we always got where we were going. It’s hard to remember the challenges of traveling before all this wonderful technology.  We  used Uber quite a bit.  It cost little more than taking the subway, and we didn’t have to mess with finding a station, buying tickets or any unnecessary walking.  I love Uber!!

One of our favorite things about Europe is all the patisseries. I am not very adventurous when it comes to food, unless it is sweets.  I’ve rarely (never??) met a baked good that I didn’t like, so we tried lots of them.  Vienna’s famous Sacher Torte was just ok, the strudel was good, although not really very sweet, and I found several variations on my favorites – cream filled pastries.  Bill is still complaining that I sent him out in the rain, which was really barely a drizzle, one night after dinner when we discovered (to Dessa’s horror) that we had no pastries for dessert (I may need to call a wambulance for Bill).

patisserie heiner

Heiner was our favorite pastry shop (and we tested several).  While we took Marie Antionette’s advice to eat cake, it’s not all that we ate.  We, of course, had to try the schnitzel, and went to the Figlmüller based on our bike guide’s recommendation.  We went for lunch and since we didn’t have a reservation, were seated at a shared table. Everyone that arrived after us got turned away, so we got lucky.  We shared the pork schnitzel which was good, and the size of a medium pizza. For sides, we ordered carrot salad and potatoes and both were too weird for me.  The carrot salad was just shredded carrots with vinegar, and the potatoes were seasoned with something strange. Not good!

Pork Schnitzel at the Figlmuller

(Actually, they were fine but it was a little odd to get just a big bowl of shredded carrots).  I tried lots of different ciders, beers, and radlers (half beer and half fruit juice).  They were all very strong compared to the light beer I usually favor at home  (there weren’t many complaints while she was drinking them.  In fact we bought some of her favorites when we got home).

During the planning phase for our trip, Bill was investigating all sorts of day trips outside the city and accumulating a long To Do list.  Fortunately, we agreed to focus just on Vienna to give us time to relax and experience the beauty of the city.  This meant we had a lot of time to just wander around the Innere Stadt enjoying the sites and taking too many pictures.

Although it seemed that there was a museum on every corner and in every historic building, we only went to one (other than the Schonbrunn Palace).  The museum inside the Belvedere Palace is primarily an art museum and it had a large Klimt exhibit.  I love his work, particularly his “golden phase” which is rather contemporary.

The Kiss

It was very interesting to see how the style of his work evolved over his lifetime.  Bill got some nice photos since we were allowed to use our cameras, although it was difficult to get photos with all the selfie “self” lovers standing in front of everything.  The Belvedere Palace of course had a botanical garden which demanded a visit (yes, that meant more flower pictures, not that I’m complaining as I like to take them too).  There are flowers all over the city, and the Volksgarten was probably my favorite park, full of roses.  The weather was beautiful, and we covered as much as we could in five days, but we will definitely want to return for a longer stay, and to take some side trips to nearby countries, to Salzburg, or down the Danube.  So much to see!!

For now, we are off to catch a train to Budapest.

You can find all of out Vienna photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/bill_and_dessa/albums/72157685639635696/with/35485680102/

Post Author: Dessa   (with editorial comments by Bill in Italics)