Hofburg palace
Originally uploaded by SaurabhA.
We arrived in Vienna by train on Tuesday afternoon. Immediately, Vienna felt very different from Budapest. Even though much of the recent history and architecture is similar due to the Hapsburgs, Vienna is clearly a more modern city with better infrastructure. We arrived at Westbahnhof and switched to the subway (U-Bahn) to get to the city center; the U-Bahn was very efficient and well laid out. Soon, we had checked into our hotel in Vienna, and headed out to explore the city.
After checking into our hotel, we were hungry so we walked up Karntnerstrasse (Vienna's main pedestrian strip) to a cool little restaurant called Buffet Trzesniewski, which serves tasty little finger sandwiches and mini glasses of Pfiff beer (picture). After a quick lunch, we took the ring-road tram (picture) around the city center to get our bearings. From the ring-road tram, you can get a glimpse of many of Vienna's main sights, including the Hofsburg Palace, Parliament, City Hall, Museums, St. Stephen's Cathedral and the Stadtpark (with statues of many of Vienna's famous composers). After wandering around the city for a few hours, going into St. Stephen's cathedral, visiting the City Hall (which also had a festival going on) and seeing the Hofsburg Palace from the outside, (stopping for a nice coffee and Apfelstrudel at Demer's cafe - picture), we then went back to our hotel, changed, and headed out for dinner. For dinner, we went to a very local restaurant called EsterHazyKeller which has self-serve food and cheap wines in an underground cellar-like restaurant. This atmosphere was very unique and the food was quite good (I had a sausage and Nadya had a schnitzel - picture). After dinner, we spent some more time exploring Vienna at night, taking some night photographs (picture) and then headed back to the hotel.
On Wednesday, our second - and last - day in Vienna, we started off with a tour of the Hofsburg treasury (picture). This was a fascinating look at the history (and power) of the Hapsburg empire and the glory days of Vienna and Austria. From there, we took a tour of the famous Opera House (picture). One of the interesting things about this building is that a lot of it was destroyed during WWII; in my opinion, the original decor and architecture of the building was much nicer than the areas which were rebuilt after the war. For dinner that evening, we went to a Film festival at City hall, which had lots of food booths, and was very lively. We had some great beer in a very local, laid back atmosphere (picture). After spending a couple of hours drinking beer, eating good food, people watching and listening to good music at the festival, we then headed back to the center of town for a famous Sacher Torte and coffees (picture).
On Thursday, we took the train on to Prague, our last stop on this Central Europe trip.