Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report Vienna

We revisited Vienna in April 2011 for six days, after 28 years. Of course, the important monuments and places have not been changed, but you see that a lot of renovation work was done, everything seems new. The new and modern buildings are beautifully integrated with old ones. Being spring , there were many flowers in blooming like lilac, chestnut trees, tulips and magnolias and this made every thing to look nicer and brighter.

We stayed very centrally, on Naglergasse (pedestrian), which is an extension of famous pedestrian street Graber. So we were two steps of St. Stephen, the Hofburg, the Josephplaz and metro. We rented there a studio , which was large, very clean and very well equipped with every thing wich we needed.

The weather was good, 16 - 18 °C , only once was a little rain.

We walked a lot, used metro or taxi few times when we had to go far (like to Steinhof) and once, we took the train to Eisenstadt.

Because we had only 6 days, we decided to not revisit the classical touristic sites, which we still remember from our precedent visit. We preferred to see other things that we could not visit or did not exist in 1983. However, we enjoyed to see again well-known buildings and places, like Hofburg, St . Stefan church, Burg Theater, opera, …

Vienna has a very high density of beautiful, impressive and decorated buildings. Everywhere you look you will find a statue, a colonnade or statue. Sometimes, because of all beautiful buildings which you meet, you can lose the way because you are tempted to see a building or statue around the corner !

In principal, we were interesting to see art nouveau in Vienna, interior of Parliament and of City Hall, Hundertwasser house and Haydn hall in Esterhazy Palace..

We visited (in that order):
- Secession House
- Augustinen kirche
- Karlskirche (we visited it also in 1983, but being near it we decided to enter again, and we were glad that we did this)
- Otto Wagner Karlstation
- Guided visit of City Hall
- Donner Fountain in NeuerMarkt
- Imperial tombs (Cappucines church)
- Guided visit of Parliament
- Steinhof church at Otto Wagner Hospital
- Trip to Eisenstadt, to see Esterhazy palace
- Leopold Museum in the Museums Quarter
- Otto Wagner houses in Linke Wienzeile , near Naschmarkt
- Jesuit Church
- Obbere Belvedere
- Military musem at Arsenal – it is interesting even if you are not so interested about wars. Beautiful building, a large and full of statues hall, many pictures and sculptures, cars, planes, ships, etc.
- Hundertwasserhaus

The guided tours of City Hall and of Parliament were very interesting and allow us to see the interiors of these important and beautiful buildings. No reservation is required.
Steinhof church can be visited only on Saturday afternoon, from 15:00 with guide or from 16:00 till 17:00 without guide. We took the taxi to there as it is far from the city center. It is a very original building, the decorations are modern. The interior is bright and full of warmth, all showing the concern for those with special needs.

I went to two shows:
- at Palffy theater - Mozart and Strauss concert
- at Reimond theater - a musical made by Udo Jurgens's songs "I have never been to New York”

And we can not omit the gastronomic part :
- As our pension was 50 meters from the famous store Meinl, we bought from there a lot of goodies to fill our fridge.
- at Figlmuller restaurant , famous for the huge Viennese schnitzel . We liked the place and the food.
- we had Sacher torte and a coffee at Cafe Sacher (we did not like the Sacher tort, but enjoyed to see the coffee house.).
- A superb strudel and a coffee at Cafe Central, the Palace Ferstel. The Café central is a beautiful place, I recommend to visit it even if you do not want a cake !
- A dinner at Salzamt restaurant - considered the best restaurant in the neighborhood dubbed the "Bermuda Triangle", near the old Jewish area. It evokes a Viennese bistro at the beginning of the 20th century.
- we enjoyed a delicious bratwurst bought on the street, near our house