Vienna vacations can be as long or as brief as you want them to be.
There are great buildings, wide avenues, music and culture along with a celebrated cafe society.
We decided on a short outing as we were in Prague on a short vacation and we thought we might as well have a day in the city of Vienna. This is not, I suspect, the first thought in most people’s minds when they visit Prague but we thought it was feasible. So we did it.
We arrived just about lunchtime and there was a Underground stop just around the corner from where the coach dropped us. It was very simple to acquire a ticket and find the correct train to take us to the city center. We chose the stop close to the Opera House, as this is the stop to find all 3 of the hop on hop off buses. Because we only had 6 hours this was the best approach to see as much as possible, quickly and then get off to see some things in more detail.
Our first route was to see the Schonenberg Palace. We debated whether to go into the palace but decided it would take up too much time. As with all hop on hop off buses we had a running commentary through our headset and I do think this is an tremendous way to get a overview of any city.
Many of the buildings were magnificent and the wide roads and avenues made it easy to picture how the city would have appeared without all the present day traffic. I don’t know a lot on the subject of the ruling families of Austria except many of them were Hapsburgs and the most infamous female member must be Marie Antionette, and of the others Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose killing in Sarajevo sparked off the 1st world war.
Between buses we strolled around the Opera House locale and even played with the idea of having coffee plus sacha torte at the Hotel Sacha. However there were lengthy queues and the service was slow so we gave it a miss.
The next trip was the immediate city centre, which gave us the opportunity to see the major buildings, mostly State and cultural but again it gave us a good overview of the city. As we neared the closing stages of this excursion we were in an old area of the city where the streets were so narrow that the bus could only just get by.
This is where Mozart had lived for a a small amount of years and composed The Barber of Seville there. We got off the bus at this juncture and enjoyed a little time exploring the narrow streets and squares.
Eventually the heat got too much and we spied a very busy ice cream parlour and we ate it sitting resting on the steps of a statue to Guttenberg, this seemed to be a popular place to sit.
All to soon it was time to catch the Underground back to our coach pick up point.
I don’t even pretend to have experienced the true Vienna in such a short time but brief visits give you an over all overview of a city and give you an idea of whether or not you would like to spend longer there.
I am happy we had our day in Vienna but I haven’t made my mind up so far.
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