Vienna holidays can be as prolonged or as brief as you want them to be.
There are grand buildings, open avenues, music and culture as well as a celebrated cafe society.
We decided on a short trip for the reason that we were in Prague on a short trip 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 possible. So we did it.
We arrived going on for lunchtime and there was a Underground station just around the corner from where the coach dropped us. It was incredibly uncomplicated to obtain a ticket and find the right train to take us to the centre. We chose the stop in the vicinity of the Opera House, seeing that this is the stop to take all 3 of the hop on hop off buses. As we only had 6 hours this was the best route 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 discussed 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 via our headset and I do think this is an excellent means to get a taste of any city.
Many of the buildings were beautiful and the wide roads and avenues made it simple to see in your mind's eye how the city would have seemed devoid of all the present day traffic. I don’t know a lot on the subject of the ruling families of Austria aside from lots of of them were Hapsburgs and the most celebrated female member must be Marie Antionette, and of the others Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose killing in Sarajevo sparked off the first world war.
Between buses we meandered around the Opera House locale and even played with the idea of having coffee plus sacha torte at the Hotel Sacha. However there were extensive queues and the service was relaxed so we gave it a miss.
The next trip was the immediate city centre, which gave us the chance to see the foremost buildings, mostly State and cultural but again it gave us a good flavor of the city. As we neared the conclusion of this tour 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 here and enjoyed a little while 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 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 authentic Vienna in such a short time but short visits give you an over all taste of a city and give you an idea of whether or not you would like to spend more time there.
I am glad we had our day in Vienna but I haven’t made my mind up yet.
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