Beginning in Vienna and travelling by train, in early July Jack and I toured three European capital cities. We spent four nights in each city which gave us three full days and one-half day to explore at leisure. I have no doubt there are many more things we missed than things we found but these are my impressions of each city, starting with Vienna.
Things I loved about Vienna:
Art & Architecture
It’s impossible to describe the size and grandeur of the Imperial Palace, Burggarten, and the Museums Quarter. Manicured gardens, vast equestrian statues and ostentatious architecture spanning seven centuries combine to drop jaws and take breath away. This is opulence on a monumental scale. It would take several days to fully explore the Palace and museums alone. We could only afford the time to visit one museum and we chose the Leopold Museum which, with its 8,000 works of art from the second half of the 19th-century to Modernism, easily swallowed more than two hours.
After dragging ourselves away from the Museum Quarter, the following day we headed to the main shopping area where we found St Stephen’s Cathedral, a Gothic masterpiece with striking roof tiles and magnificent towers. Standing right in the heart of shopping streets, it looked perfectly at home amongst the 21st-century multitude of visitors and shoppers.
And it wasn’t the only example of striking juxtapositional styles that worked a treat. Contemporary sculptures in aluminium shone against backdrops of Imperial style; Art Nouveau sat alongside modernism; and in the midst of non-descript streets rose the fabulously quirky neighbourhood of Hundertwasser.
An entire urban village of brightly coloured mosaic façades bedecked with greenery and not a straight edge in site, has sprung up around the colourfully decorated Hundertwasser House created in 1983 by the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The village has shops and galleries, a beautiful bar in which you can watch a film of the artist showing you around his home, and oodles of green spaces.
It’s a wonderful example of how you can turn dreary urban architecture into something of great beauty and bring economic benefits to the area in the process.
Music
The one thing I wanted to do while I was in Vienna, was to go to a classical concert, which we did. We went to see the Vienna Mozart Orchestra play in the Golden Hall. Despite a rocky start involving a thunderstorm, a Jack-rant, and annoying selfie-takers (all for a later post), it was a fabulous evening and the highlight of our stay in Vienna for me.
Cafés
From Costa to traditional Viennese coffee houses, you can’t walk far without the smell of roasted beans assailing your nostrils, and with so many sights to see, packing in the sit-downs is a must. The more traditional the coffee house and the nicer its location, the more you can expect to pay. We tried multiple venues for our mid-morning cappuccinos and found prices that ranged from a very reasonable €3.50 to an outrageous €26 for two cappuccinos and three miniscule petit fours at Café Museum in Karlsplatz.
Transport
Zipping around the city could not have been easier. We bought Vienna City Cards that gave us free travel on public transport for 72hrs, including the CAT from the airport to the city. At €42 each it was excellent value for money, and we notched up journeys far exceeding our outlay. The ticket was valid for metro, tram, S-Bahn and buses which covered every conceivable journey and got us from our hotel district to the city centre in around 10 minutes.
The Hotel
My favourite hotel of the trip was Vienna’s Der Wilhelmshof on Leopoldstrasse. Uber stylish, as comfortable as home, and with a brilliant breakfast, it ticked all the boxes. Set on a quiet street in an area north of the river and alongside the Giant Ferris Wheel (it’s said that if you don’t ride the Ferris Wheel, you haven’t been to Vienna – we rode it), there were multiple restaurants and several bars in easy strolling distance.
Things I didn’t like about Vienna:
The Food
This wasn’t my first trip to Austria and my previous experience with gastronomy had not been favourable, but I hoped the city would produce something more memorable. It didn’t. We doubtless missed the best of the culinary offerings but as you would expect from us, we did our research and we tried as many different venues as we could fit in. The only evening meal I enjoyed was at a Middle Eastern restaurant a 10-minute walk from the Golden Hall on the evening we went to the Mozart concert. Every other meal we tried was meat-heavy and bland, even an Asian fusion restaurant couldn’t muster any strength – my Thai Red Curry was insipid – despite being lauded on TripAdvisor.
Prices
Vienna is expensive. There’s good value to be found, in the travel card for example, but on the whole, this is a city that reeks of money. I saw more designer dresses and bespoke tailoring on the streets of Vienna that I’ve seen on any number of catwalks. Outlets like Dior, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana spilled out fashionistas by the score. Just looking in their windows nearly gave me a nosebleed. This is a city that places a great deal of emphasis on looks, from its architecture to its residents; I certainly couldn’t afford to live here.
What surprised me in Vienna:
Free drinking water
Something that we found only here yet would have been incredibly useful in all the cities we visited, was fountains of fresh, cold drinking water. Queues formed at the fountains on the main shopping streets as visitors refilled bottles of water to deal with the 34°/35°C temperatures. There were also areas where fine clouds of cool water mists sprayed out for you to feel on your face, and fountains of fine mist for children (and adults) to run through. These were life-savers and I would love to see other cities adopting this sensible practice.
LGBTQ+ pedestrian traffic signals
This lovely feature apparently came about following Austria’s success in the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. When Austria consequently hosted the following year, they decided to make a statement on equality, sexuality and tolerance by installing ‘couples’ red and green lights at 50 locations. Each of the designated lights features a couple holding hands – mixed, all-male, and all-female – and each has a heart in the picture. They’re delightful and Jack risked getting run over to snap them.
Temporary gardens
We saw these outside the Leopold Museum and I was blown away by them. Planted in special containers loaded onto pallets, these juvenile plants and shrubs are being given the chance to develop their root systems and become acclimatised to the environment before being planted permanently, thus giving them the greatest chance of surviving and thriving. It’s an urban oasis which contributes to greater biodiversity; creates a shadier, cooler, greener site; and looks fabulous.
