Vienna

Hello again! We’ve had a pretty quick stop in Vienna but had a great time walking around the streets and checking things out!

We arrived on Monday in the afternoon and checked into our hotel. We hadn’t realised, but our hotel was pretty much brand new. It had only been open for 7 weeks! It was very funky with all kinds of colours (mainly pinks and purples) everywhere. Such a random hotel and only a 9 minute walk from the central train station! We were glad we didn’t have to lug our packs very far like we have in some cities.

Once checked in, we headed into the city centre. We first wanted to find out if we could get some cheap concert tickets, but due to being the high season, they don’t do last minute tickets. We spent ages trying to decide what to go to and settled on a string ensemble in St Peter’s church. We were all booked for Tuesday night.

We went for a walk to Stephansplatz to check out the main centre. The church in the middle of the square is huge! We went inside and did the free thing where you stand at the back and can pretty much see the whole thing. It is a pretty incredible building!

There were loads of people around and it was super hot so we kept walking and found some ice cream. We then walked over to St Peter’s church which was also a pretty incredible building. It’s not very impressive outside, but the artwork and designs on the inside are amazing. It has domed ceilings which are painted to look like more impressive domes. There were gold statues everywhere! It was a cool church.

We then walked over to Museums Quartier and found a place on the grass to sit down and chill. It was nice to get out of the sun! On the way there we passed so many incredible buildings. All of the museums look amazing from the outside and we had to decide which one we were going to visit.

After a bit more walking around, we headed back to the area where our hotel was and went to a schnitzel takeaway restaurant for dinner. It was cheap and yum!

Tuesday

On Tuesday morning we headed into town to go to the Belvedere museum. We decided on this one because it has The Kiss painted by Gustav Klimt. Apparently it attracts Mona Lisa type crowds.

The museum is set in an amazing old palace. In the foyer area all of the columns holding up the building have men carved into them to make it look like they’re holding the building up. The artwork was mainly from 17th – 20th century and was really cool.

The Kiss had a crowd, but based on my memories of the Mona Lisa as a kid, they overhyped how big the crowd would be. But that’s ok because the artwork was pretty amazing. In this part of the gallery there were also works by Van Gogh and Monet. I actually quite enjoyed seeing all of these famous works and being able to be up close to see details in the painting.

When we left the museum it was lunchtime so we decided to head over to Naschmarkt for some food.

The markets were amazing! There was so much food to choose from ranging from burgers to sausages to cheeses to fish! We walked through and had a very yum sausage at one of the stands. We found a stand that sells loads of different flavours of vinegar. The lady selling the vinegar couldn’t really believe we hadn’t tried flavoured vinegar before. We tried a pear one, a berry one, and we even tried pumpkin seed oil. It was all yum! She said they have it on salads and even ice cream.

After walking through all the markets, we were still hungry so we had a burger. It was incredible. I don’t know if it is just because I was hungry (Miriam says yes), but it was probably the best burger I’ve had on the trip. The buns were soft, the meat was great and the cheese was yum!

The rest of the afternoon we spent walking around and checking out a few more sights. We decided to make dinner with Jordan & Tristin at their hostel so we grabbed some pasta from the supermarket.

After dinner we got ready to go to the concert! It was way too hot to put jeans on, but the tickets said no shorts so I had to. We caught the metro over to the church and when we arrived they upgraded our tickets to seats closer to the front! We had purchased the cheapest ‘back of the church’ seats and were stoked to sit more like mid-way. The church was all lit up on the inside which made the gold and the paintings sparkle.

The ensemble was incredible! It was a string quartet and they placed pieces by Mozart, Vivaldi, Schubert, Beethoven and Bach. It was great to hear the National Bank theme song played right in front of me along with a bunch of famous classical music. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it, but it was very good. The musicians were incredibly talented and I don’t know how they get their fingers to move so fast!

After the show we headed back to our hotel to pack up before heading to Budapest in the morning! We are currently on the train and looking forward to a quick tour of a new city.

We both really enjoyed Vienna and there was plenty more that we could have done, but we are stoked with what we got to see in our short time there!

Bye for now! 👋🏻