After our evening show at the Spanish Riding School, held in the impressive Hofburg Palace, today it was out into the sunshine for some exploring of Vienna.
Dealing with the phone drama….
We’d enjoyed some breakfast in our apartment before having to deal with my broken phone. I’d dropped it in the snow in Innsbruck, and while it was a soft fall, it appeared the screen had popped off likely due to the glue being a bit too cold in Switzerland and Austria. Who would have thought phones don’t like temps of minus 16? Now back in a big city, there was a phone repair shop just down the road. Unfortunately being the Christmas/New Year period they could not get a new screen shipped in before we had to move off to the next place as they were on back order all over Europe. We decided another 3 weeks of travel with no phone for communication and directions on the go was a pain….. so I found a second hand phone that was decent enough to do the job and was back in the land of communication.
Off to Schönbrunn…
We had a beautiful sunny and crisp day of 5 degrees to explore Vienna. Di and Max were off to explore the sights of Vienna via the hop-on hop-off bus. The 5 of us, plus Lorraine, head off via the train and tram to Schönbrunn Palace. We (minus Zinnia) had visited there in 2016, on a very cold, grey and snowy day. Today was bright sunshine and we thought it was a good opportunity to see it again and also visit some markets. While the gardens aren’t at their peak in Winter it did look very different today in sunshine.
We’d done the Schönbrunn palace tour before, so were happy to skip it today and concentrate on the gardens. Which turned out to be wise as Max and Di couldn’t get into a palace tour, when they tried. As even by 1pm as the palace was so full they didn’t think they’d get everyone through.
We had a little explore of the market in front of Schönbrunn, with some Christmas decoration purchases and some hot chocs for the kids. In Vienna the Christmas markets technically stop on December 23 but they magically turn into ‘New Years’ markets from Christmas day, with all the same stalls and decorations. We’d visited these markets on a freezing day in 2016 and had memories of trying to warm up with hot drinks! Today was also rather cold but at least the sun was shining.
We added a few souvenirs and Christmas decorations to our collection and enjoyed seeing a few of the different things they had on offer in the Vienna markets.
After the markets, we head around the outside of the Palace and we wandered around to the Palace gardens. The Schönbrunn Palace was the main Summer residence of the Habsburg rulers and is the most popular tourist attraction in Vienna. The Palace and gardens attract over 3.5 million visitors a year.
The current palace was constructed in the 1740s and contains hundreds of rooms. We did the palace tour in 2016 and the rooms are certainly opulent. On that visit the gardens were partly under snow, but today we had grass and a blue sky!
Sun and beautiful views…..
After checking out the palace exterior and many of the opulent statues, we set off for the gloriette, which is perched on a small hill, looking back towards the palace.
The palace gardens stretch over a square kilometre, and include tree lined avenues and landscaped flowerbeds. There weren’t many flowers at this time of year but the fountains, statues and walled gardens are still pretty impressive.
The ponds were not entirely under ice and snow this time but they were definitely still frozen. Even though it was sunny it was still obviously cold as all the ponds were frozen. Plenty of children were amusing themselves throwing ice across the top. There were quite a lot of scattered bits of ice sitting on top of the pond.
There is a zig-zag path leading up to the gloriette, and there were great views of the palace and over to the Vienna city.
The gloriette triumphal arch was reportedly built to ensure a nice view from the windows of the main palace. Like most things in Vienna, it is not understated!
The views on such a clear day were stunning and we enjoyed seeing Vienna laid out in front of us.
There were plenty of tourists around, even in the middle of Winter. The cafe in the gloriette was packed, so no stopping there for us. We did enjoy posing with the statues and ponds.
The views were just as good on the way back down. We clocked up a couple of kilometres of wandering, winding our way back down to the palace, where the lines to get in were now extremely long.
Falafel lunches
We bit farewell to Schönbrunn, pleased to have seen the gardens in sunshine. We walked to the nearby train station and caught the train into Landstrasse with a plan to get lunch before some more exploring.
It was an efficient and short train into the old town. We grabbed some excellent falafel and kebabs for our lunch. Vienna has some amazing sausage (bratwurst) and falafel stands everywhere, and they are cheap and great quality.
It was quite cool out so we were hoping to sit inside but the outdoor seats with warm food were still pretty good. Soren was not a fan of mayo on his bratwurst, which we did think was probably not a wise idea.
Off to St Stephen’s…
We decided we’d head towards Stephansplatz to check out St Stephen’s and the nearby shops. You can see the spire of St Stephen’s from miles away so we didn’t need to worry about maps on our phones! On our wander we passed through some lovely parks and admired all the delicious goodies in shop windows, which we resisted due to not currently being hungry…. for the next 5 minutes at least!
The kids all concluded St Stephen’s cathedral does look a lot like the Kölner Dom in Cologne. It indeed does, but it’s not quite as big (or black). We decided to join the fast moving line to look inside, much to the kids annoyance. They did not want to look at another church. Even a big and impressive one.
Zinnia was especially annoyed as for some reason thought we were lining up for a horse and carriage ride and was very disappointed when we were suddenly in a cathedral with no horse in sight. We all found this hilarious but the poor thing was a bit upset so we did have to say we’d think about a horse and carriage ride in our future. She’d been eyeing the horses off since the moment we arrived in Vienna and had made her desires well known.
The inside of St Stephen’s was impressive but we all agreed we thought the inside of the Kolner Dom was better. Apparently we are cathedral experts now!
A Viennese coffee break….
Grandma then decided she’d shout us Viennese hot chocolates, coffees and some Sacher torte (the local famous cake) in a cafe around Stephanplatz. We had planned to visit a Viennese coffee house and participate in consuming plenty of delicious calories.
Being Saturday afternoon cafes, with available seats, seemed to be a premium but we eventually found one with enough indoor seats for all of us. The temperature was starting to drop now and we were keen on some warming up.
The kids got hot chocolates with plenty of cream. Our coffees didn’t turn out to be Viennese but they were hot and had caffeine! We got our Sacher torte and also ordered a delicious chocolate and orange Italian cake. There was a lot of cream and we were pretty sure we were all sugar and creamed out now! We had ticked off Sacher torte in Vienna and kind of Viennese coffees.
Vienna by sunset…
As we emerged from the cafe, at 3pm, all the lights were coming on. Sunset is 4pm here at the moment and it is rather pretty with all the shops lit up, and many Christmas decorations in windows. We wandered between Stephansplatz and Karlsplatz, checking out the shops and lights.
We found plenty of very pretty shop windows and many shops Soren should not be allowed into for fear of breaking things we didn’t want to pay for!
Christmas might have been over but the buildings and streets were still looking very festive! The sun was setting so we enjoyed our walk around Karlsplatz admiring the beautiful buildings.
Vienna has many famous sausage stands and we happened across one that we’d read was super popular and the line outside it seemed to indicate this was true!
Next on our walk was a visit to the opera house. We had hoped to do the tour inside but as we arrived they were shutting the doors for the day (despite the internet indicating they should be open) so we just had to check it out from the outside.
In a small area there are plenty of beautiful buildings and statues to admire. The light was very pretty so it wasn’t hard on our eyes.
There were excellent views from the terrace near the Albertina museum and we could see the sun starting to set behind the Hofburg Palace. Vienna definitely does spectacular buildings well! The kids continued their endless questions about Germany and Austria and WWII so there was plenty of ‘on the go history’ as we wandered between monuments.
About 4pm we decided to wander back towards the apartment as it was getting cold and dark, and we’d racked up plenty of steps for the day. Vienna had certainly put on some good Winter weather for us to enjoy the sights of the city!
We’d managed to procure enough supplies for dinner and dessert in our apartment. We have an array of supermarkets, and bakeries within 50m of our apartment so foraging isn’t too hard here! Di and Max had also returned from their hop on-hop off adventures around Vienna, and Max had found more Santas to add to their ever growing collection from some Christmas market visits.
We finished off the day with some dessert from a bakery across the road. A tasty end to the day!
Up next….
More exploring of Vienna and the much anticipated flaker (horse and carriage ride). We had a day of amazing sights in the beautiful city and plenty of delicious food!
