We needed an add on to Paris & chose Vienna. What a pleasant surprise!

As suggested by Fodorites we stayed at Pension Suzanne. Right in the middle of the city, a few blocks from the Opera House, we were able to walk to so many sites.

The pedestrian avenues were 3-4 blocks away. I say "avenues" because in most European cities the pedestrian walkways are narrow lanes. In Vienna they are extra wide avenues with cafes and seating down the middle. Anything you could want from Zara's to H&M, to t-shirt etc. to extremely high end shops are side by side. Cafes abound---yikes, you could spend days here.

The pension was fantastic. An odd entry into a sort of office building, you took the elevator to the 2nd floor office & the rooms were above. We chose the most expensive for the size. It had a small kitchen that we never used except for ice. We had a cute foyer, a large room with a king sized bed (unusual for Europe.)

Bookmarking, would like to see what you saw and did in Vienna

Ooops! Didn't mean to send yet.

The breakfast room was old world decorated and for 10 Euros a person had many choices. We had breakfast there all of our 5 days. Who wants to search out food early in the morning?

So many high end hotels closeby, this was a real deal at 158 Euros including breakfast.

Arriving at 5pm, after check-in and settling in we were directed to a wonderful outdoor gashthaus across the street.

What a way to start our Vienna adventure. The Plachuttas de Opera.
Grilled goat cheese atop a pumpkin compote and a beef broth with sliced pancakes, followed by schnitzel (of course) The food and wine was absolutely fantastic, the setting wonderful, and the service right on point. Could the rest of our visit live up to this?

I didn't tag this as a trip report so I started a new thread with the trip report tag

Nice to hear you liked Vienna. Curious - why "better than expected"? What made you have low expectations? Vienna doesn't exactly have a bad reputation, for anything, it's always been a great destination.

I think expectations really make a difference in how we see things. I'm frequently happily surprised or disappointed in a place based on expectations.

I think there have been a number of posts here over the years making Vienna sound less interesting/rewarding to visit than many other major European cities. I know from experience off the board that more than one person (who otherwise loves Europe) found Vienna boring or stuffy or something negative. I also felt it 'exceeded expectations'.

And I also stayed at Pension Suzanne.

I've always liked Vienna and have wondered why others didn't. It's a great city for just wandering around.

What did I expect? Not sure, just a very German influence. It wasn't until we read more about the Palaces etc. that we got interested. And my grandparents were from Austria. I have their birth certificates but they are in bad shape & can't tell what city they were born.

As I said above, I didn't tag this as a TR so I started a new thread and continued by report here:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...rip-report.cfm

i'm a big pension suzanne fan... so glad you liked it!!