Vienna & Bratislava City Break

Recommended days	4
Budget	£
Difficulty	Easy

Never being one to take things easy, I decided we’d do more than just visit Vienna on this trip. It became a Vienna & Bratislava city break when I discovered that we could tag Bratislava on with an hours train journey.

Why Vienna

This was our first visit to Vienna and it’s a shame we left it so long. The old imperial city, capital of an empire that spanned Europe, is now a delightfully small tourist haven. The city walls that defeated the Turks have now gone but the churches, palaces and gardens of the Hapsburg monarchy are still there.

Combine this with a glorious cafe culture, good public transport and plenty of pedestrianised streets and it’s pretty much an ideal city break.

Vienna

We flew with BA from Heathrow and were up at 4.30 to leave the hotel. How we chuckled at the delight of such an early start. We went straight through security and then had an hour to kill before the gate opened. The flight went very quickly as I was watching Killing Eve – an excellent bit of BBC drama.

We bought return tickets on the airport express train and then a 2 day subway pass costing a total of €38 each before Natalya helpfully told us that we could have saved €21 each by downloading the travel app at home and buying the passes there ….. She has a way to go before making a proper travel guide!

We then tried to find our hotel (Opera Suites, booked through Hotels.com). Finding the street was easy but it took ages to find the damned place until we discovered the sign was inside a doorway off the street.

Vienna: Palmenhaus

We left our bags in the hotel as we were too early to check in but managed to change in to shorts as it was baking outside. By now we were pretty hungry so Nat guided us to Palmenhaus, a cafe in part of the imperial butterfly house. A very grand building with an equally grand menu and price list! The waiter was fun but the service was so damned slow!

They did point out it was a lunchtime but I kinda thought staffing levels would be planned to allow for that! The food was decent though and apple strudel dessert was good although smoking does seem to be a big thing in Austria!

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Vienna: St Stephens Cathedral

From there we walked to St Stephens Cathedral. The architecture was beautiful, so many grand buildings befitting its status as a world imperial capital. The cathedral was very imposing but had lots of scaffolding so couldn’t get a decent picture from the outside.

The interior was very dark but we did the rooftop tour which was quite amazing, once the vertigo hit had stabilised. The city is very low lying with no tall modern buildings so the eighteenth century landmarks still stand out.

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From the cathedral we walked through some of the Palais Ferstel complex and then in to St Peters church which was beautiful, in a very catholic way, with every surface covered in decoration. After a quick pause in one of the many chocolate shops we went to Freshii for dinner. Again, not exactly fast food but decent and hopefully healthy!

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By then we were all pretty tired but we had masochistically booked tickets for the ballet. We caught the two subway trains we needed and then followed the herd to the very modern opera building. We had a quick coffee first in Volksopern Cafe-Espresso just to try and keep us awake for the performance.

The ballet was an experience. I wouldn’t want to do it again but at least I know. It’s something that needs a lot of investment to learn the language of what each action means and without it the story is pretty meaningless. The skill of the performers was superb though. At least it was a relatively short performance, 2 hours or so and we got back to the hotel just after 10.

After much discussion the next morning we decided to head to Erich for breakfast – a cafe Z and Nat had both read about. It was quite a walk from the subway and the weather was clear but damned cold. Mr Intelligent was wearing shorts and a light fleece on the off chance it would warm up later so I was a bit annoyed that the only seating available was outside. The food though was bloody delicious and lots of it, we all left feeling rather replete.

Vienna: Schonbrunn Palace

To try and make a dent in our massive calorie intake we walked to the Schonbrunn Palace which was actually quite a trek. The palace was beautiful and the scale of the gardens was still impressive. The Gloriette Monument gave incredible views over the entire city and was worth slogging up the hill for.

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After spending a good couple of hours we were then in need of more sustenance so stopped at Cafe Phil and had a most definitely non instant coffee and a piece of rather bland and dry cheesecake. Nat and I then had some baklava in the Naschmarkt to make up for it and then the others stopped at Yumi for a light Japanese lunch but I was pretty stuffed by that time!

Vienna: Belvedere Palace

We intended to get the tram to our final stop – Belvedere Palace – but we couldn’t be bothered with the wait so we walked there and actually arrived before the tram. We didn’t go inside as we only had 30 minutes before it closed but the gardens of the palace were very impressive although the wind meant we couldn’t get the classic reflection photos of the palace facade.

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We took the tram back to the hotel to relax for an hour and rest our feet (20k walked so far) and Nat did some research on cheap places to eat as we had already burned through far too much money on all the damned cafe stops! We settled on Duzi’s Kitchen, a Lebanese place, which had the added benefit of being 5 minutes walk away.

After a nice and very reasonable dinner we then headed to the SkyBar to see views of the cathedral. This was a bit of a let down – the outside terrace was closed so you had to look through glass which meant photos weren’t practical.

Worse though was the stink of smoke as smoking inside is still legal here! We left after one drink, Deb and I to go back to the hotel and Nat and Z to continue on to another rooftop bar they’d seen ……

Sunday morning we left slightly later than intended for breakfast and we eventually met up around 9.45 after a little walk to Cafe le Marche, again recommended by Nat. A most excellent meal and a good start to the day. Although we then went in to cafe Aida about 30 minutes later and had cake and macaroons to go with our coffees.

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We wandered through the centre of old Vienna admiring the architecture before getting to the hotel to check out, Z to head back to the UK and the rest of us to head on to Bratislava.

Bratislava

We took the subway to the station and then waited in the very cold sunshine for an hour as we had just missed the train we were aiming for. I did doze most of the way to Bratislava which was a plus and we then took a taxi to our hotel.

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The Doubletree is a little way out of town but we were both upgraded to suites which meant we actually had space to unpack and relax without getting in each others way.

After about 30 minutes we met up and took a taxi to the old town of Bratislava. We got dropped off at the Blue Church, an art noveau church that is, well, blue. From there we walked through the old town, a lot older than the Viennese buildings and far more of a hodge podge of routes and streets. Very pleasant to walk around and look at with plenty of character and helped by autumn sunshine.

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We climbed the tower at St Micheals gate to look at the military museum and get views of the city before stopping for a late lunch at Urban Bistro, excellent food and very good value too. We then walked through a bit more of the town before crossing the bridge to the UFO observation platform, staffed by possibly the most disinterested ticket attendant ever, so full marks to her! The views were, as expected, stunning as we watched sunset over the Danube.

We were all knackered by now so we walked back to McD’s for a salad before taking another taxi to the hotel to take our shoes off and rest our aching feet!

On the Monday we had a very chilled morning as we didn’t need to rush out for breakfast and wanted to take advantage of the space in the suite to relax for a while. We eventually went downstairs around 9.30 and had a huge breakfast before packing and taking the bus to the train station.

Cleverly we managed to get on the wrong bus and go to the wrong train station so we arrived as the train was pulling away from the platform and had a 90 minute wait for the next one. The trains were excellent though – no grafitti, clean and quiet and also bloody cheap. A Vienna – Bratislava return was less than a single from Bristol to Swindon!

We arrived in Vienna and then took the subway towards our last stop, the Intercontinental (paid for on points again!). This hotel doesn’t really try and compete with the grand 19th century buildings around it but the interior is certainly impressive. We had a large room on the 9th floor with great views over the city.

We dumped our stuff and then headed out for lunch and to the Imperial Crypts. We found a lunch place just a couple of minutes from the crypts and had a nice meal before heading across to the crypts to find they were closed early for cleaning that day! Aaarrrggghh!

We spent about an hour just wandering around, looking at the buildings. The weather was damned cold but still dry although without the sunshine of the first few days. The architecture in the city is just magnificent – every building seems to have little touches of detail on carvings or statues or just decoration.

I really don’t think I have ever seen such a concentration of architectural exuberance anywhere else and it’s amazing how quickly it has declined from an empire ruling half of Europe to a small country on the fringes of power.

We were also surprised at the coffee shops – although the cakes and coffees were damned gorgeous they had very limited options. We are used to choosing decaff, soy, oat milk etc etc. Here things are very much more traditional.

After our walking tour, Nat headed home and we went back to the hotel. We actually had a few hours relaxing, sorting photos and doing postcards before Deb and I headed out for a night time walk around the park and the edge of the old city.

We walked past a couple of the concert halls and the state opera house was broadcasting the performance onto huge screens outside so the peasants could watch and hear the entertainment. Good to see.

On our last morning in the city we both woke early and got stuff ready to leave. Nat came over to use the gym and then we headed out for our final Viennese breakfast. This was, as usual, recommended by Nat and a 20 minute walk away to the banks of the Danube. Another delicious meal and then we parted company, her to go to work and us to grab our cases before taking our time and heading to the airport. A great holiday but damned pricey! Next time we’ll be eating in Subway and McD’s!

2018