After our lovely sunny day out exploring Schönbrunn gardens and the beautiful Vienna city centre, we were blessed with another beautifully sunny day in Vienna to engage in a little more sightseeing. It was now the 29th of December, and we were almost a month into our trip. After a little sleep-in (till at least 8am), and breakfast in our apartment. It was off to tackle the day.
It was about 4 or 5 degrees when we head out. Lorraine wasn’t feeling great and was flying back to Australia the next day so decided to have a restful day in the apartment. We head out with Max and Di to do some more Vienna exploring. They had done a hop-on, hop-off bus tour the day before and were keen to visit a few extra places today with us.
Back to Hofburg
We caught the bus and tram over towards the Hofburg Palace complex. We’d been here a few times already but there is plenty to explore, especially in daylight! We started with a wander around the Hofburg gardens and past the many Mozart statues.
We also went past the butterfly house we’d visited on our last trip to Vienna, when it was much snowier.
The ponds in the gardens here were also frozen and there was plenty of frost on the ground but no snow. It definitely looked quite different to our our last trip, where we’d enjoyed a snowy New Years Day walking through the gardens.
We then walked over to the terrace near the Albertina museum, as we’d found this a great spot for views the previous evening. It gave the kids an excellent view of all the flakers, circling on their city tours. They had well and truly let us know how they really, really, really wanted a horse and carriage ride!
After ducking past a few souvenir shops for horse related sourvenirs, we checked out the courtyards in front of the Hofburg Palace, which we’d wandered through on the way to our Spanish Riding School show a couple of nights earlier. They looked just as impressive by day.
We had to have the photo with the sign for the Spanish riding school….
Finally, the horse and carriage ride!
We hadn’t done the flaker (horse drawn carraige) rides on our last visit to Vienna and we’d thought if the weather was good we might splurge on it this time around. The flakers are all licenced and the tours all have fixed prices here (depending on the length of tour you do). The carriages are limited to 4 people so Anto and I took Soren and Zinnia, and Astrid rode with Max and Di. We met our horses and our guides and got settled into the carriages. The blankets were appreciated as it was still rather cool out.
With much excitement from the kids, we were off. Max, Di and Astrid were just behind us so it gave us plenty of opportunity to take pictures of each other 😉
We had opted for the short 20 minute tour through the old city, which took us on a short loop around the palace area but through plenty of little back streets. The tour covered off quite a few of the places we wanted to see including St Charles’s church, Mozart’s first house, the President’s residents, some rose gardens and some of the oldest pubs in Vienna, dating back over 500 years.
Our carriage wound it’s way through, Stephansplatz, Michaelerplatz, Albertinaplatz, Petersplatz and Burgtheater and Volksgarten. We had walked through some of these areas already but there were plenty of streets we hadn’t yet been down, and our guide was excellent and pointing out historical sights and giving us some history.
It was a beautiful sunny day and the city was rather easy to appreciate at horse-pace! We were pretty sure the horses knew all the different routes as they needed very little direction.
Despite the sunny skies it was rather cold even with the blankets when you weren’t moving. We were all having a fabulous time though and the kids couldn’t wipe the grins off their faces.
We also saw the huge lines already out for the famous Central Cafe, and were glad we weren’t lining up in the cold to go in! From all accounts it’s all tourists and the locals frequent other coffee houses.
The kids loved the horse and carriage ride and we all got a great amount of sightseeing and history in the 20 minutes. We were glad there were blankets though as it was quite cold. It all added to the atmosphere though…
At the end we did get to thank our horses, and Astrid’s horses were much keener on pats than ours 🙂 We did all agree it was super fun, informative and pretty good investment of our Euros.
At the end of our loop the horses had pulled off into the rest area to have their break and some food before their next tour. The kids were also suggesting that it might be time for snacks for them soon too, but we had a bit more sightseeing to do first.
More horses, in statue form….
We did a little more walking around Hofburg, mareveling in the beautiful buildings and the adjacent Roman ruins in Michaelerplatz.
We also paid a visit to the Archduke Karl monument in the Heldenplatz square as we walked through the Hofburg complex. Those of us who’d visited in 2016 remembered having photos with this large and impressive horse statue on a rather cold day.
Back in 2016, with a much smaller Astrid, Soren and their Gramps and Uncle Mikl (who were not smaller, just younger).
The Museum Quarter Market….
Next we walked over the the market in the museum quarter. Di and Max had visited the day before, as part of their hop-on, hop-off tour, so had already scoped out the best glühwein mugs and food.
With the appropriate mugs purchased,and the kids with potato snacks and eyeing off nougat (that we also purchased) and some warm glühwein in our belly, we explored the market.
This market is in the shape of a star and has a large fountain in the middle so it’s rather easy to navigate the points of the star and find your way back without too much trouble. It’s another impressive place to hold a market. Like the one in the grounds of Schönbrunn Palace we’d been to the previous day.
By now we’d had potato pancakes in so many different cities and countries, that the kids had established a rating system. We had done similar with the gluhwein!
Sightseeing on the Ringstrasse…
All warmer and with calories on board, and some more souvenir mugs in our bags, it was off to the do some more sightseeing. We head out of the museum quarter and towards the parliament building.
Unsurprisingly there was another impressive horse statue…… there were definitely no shortage of them in Vienna.
Next on the agenda was the very impressive Rathaus (city hall), with it’s ice skating rink in front. The kids were angling for more ice skating, but there was not enough time for this today so they had to make do with a look at the rink and the promise of future ice skating in Hungary and Poland.
The Vienna Rathaus was another impressive building. We’d been checking off most of the major sights along the Ringstrasse (ring road) which is famous for many splendid buildings. The Rathaus is one of the tallest buildings and the towers look down onto a central square and park – where the ice-skating rink was currently located 🙂
Continuing along the Ringstrasse our next stop was the Votivkirche (Votiv church). The Votive church is Vienna’s second tallest church after St Stephen’s and is famous for it’s neo-gothic style 78 stained glass windows.
The Votivkirche was certainly impressive and the stained glass windows were shining in the beautiful sunlight.
Another falafel lunch
Vienna is famous for it’s falafel and sausage stands. We’d had some great falafel here already. Anto found a nearby recommended falafel and kebab place that wasn’t far from the church. We all feasted on some yummy falafels, and chicken or haloumi wraps for a late lunch. We could have eaten these every day!
It was starting to get dark and cold so we decided to wander back along the Ringstrasse towards a tram and head back to our apartment. We used the tram ride back to Karlsplatz see a few more of Vienna’s impressive buildings. The kids were having fun sight-seeing out the back of the tram!
Viennese afternoon tea….
With a bit of packing up to do we stopped past one of the many nearby bakeries for afternoon Austrian pastries, including a pig for the kids and cinnamon scrolls and apples strudels for the rest of us (which the kids also stole). Yes, the kids continued their obsession with buying pig shaped cakes! This one was again pretty tasty.
We’d enjoyed another great day of Winter sightseeing in Vienna. Blessed with beautiful blue skies and temperatures that weren’t too unbearable, we’d manage to tick off most of our sightseeing ‘to-do list’ and the coffee and pastries powered us through some packing up while the kids enjoyed some movies and quiet time.
A farewell Austria, Indian feast….
It was Lorraine’s farewell dinner as she was heading back to Australia the next day. All the nearby Viennese places weren’t open or were full booked, so instead we had to find some ‘traditional’ Austrian Indian food – which was very tasty! The boys still managed to find giant Austrian beers, so they were happy.
By the time we’d eaten as much Indian food as we could manage we had to waddle back to our apartment. It was back to being a mere 3 degrees but it was looking like it was going to be significantly colder in our next stop, Budapest.
We definitely enjoyed our time in Vienna, next Budapest!
Up next…
One of our more memorable (for all the wrong reasons) train trips from Vienna to Budapest, followed by our first Hungarian markets and an impromptu visit to a Michelin starred restaurant for dinner…….
