Lost in Vienna: Part 1

I'm posting this a little bit late because after Marc left I got buried under an enormous pile of work in preparation for the brand plan presentations. However, I couldn't not write at least a little something about our trip to Vienna.

After a second night of drinking enormous steins of beer, we hopped on a train to Vienna. Oktoberfest is officially over and I think we’re both exhausted and I’ve definitely come down with a pretty horrible cold. But no fear on that front, we’ve still been good tourists in Vienna.

After arriving via train, we made our way to the hotel, a fantastic recommendation from Birgit, the Hotel Rathaus Wein und Design. A really lovely boutique design hotel located just outside the first district. It’s pretty much given us access to the entire first district which is where most of what we want to see is in the city.

Thanks to Nick we even have our very own tour guide in the form of his friend Florian. Honestly, it was practically a professional tour (I’m ashamed to say that after living in Chicago for almost 7 years there is no way I could give a tour to visiting friends that even comes close to his level of detail). With Florian as our fearless leader for the morning, we managed to see most of the major sights in the first district, the Stephan's Dome, the royal palace, Parliament, roman ruins and perhaps most importantly, Nick’s favorite Kaffee Haus, Hawelka, where we had breakfast.

After Florian headed off, Marc and I caught the U-Bahn out to Schloss Schönbrunn, the royal summer palace. It was gorgeous, but since neither of us felt like touring the inside because it was a really lovely afternoon, we ended up wandering through the gardens for a few hours. And it was in the labyrinth section that we found perhaps my favorite part of the castle, a math puzzle that took us (collectively) a good 20 minutes to solve. Obviously our basic math skills could use some refreshing. But we had such fun wandering through all of the labyrinths, activating the Male and Female principle stones (don’t ask, I still don’t quite understand what it was we were doing).

For dinner that night, Florian picked us up and brought us to a beautiful view over the city before we went to one of the Heurigan restaurants where they are licensed to sell the newest Austrian wine vintages.

One of the last things we did was to visit the Karlskirche which has been undergoing restoration for quite a few years now. It’s beautiful and interestingly has the Hebrew word for God incorporated into the main stained glass window over the altar. You can take an elevator up onto the restoration scaffolding to get a better view of the frescos. Marc and I actually did this and I have to say it is one of the scarier things I’ve done in a while and I’m not one who is really afraid of heights. But there seemed to be no one managing the number of people on there and quite frankly is just didn’t seem that stable to me. But we saw it and I have some wonderful pictures to show from the trip.

Not a bad introduction to Vienna, although I’m looking forward to coming back with Nick and seeing it a bit more as a local. I have no doubt that I’ll be back soon. All in all a really fantastic few days to end our trip together before we had to head home to Frankfurt for Marc’s last night/Poker game (where I might add he won! I so love beginners luck in these games).


My tips:

Hotel:
Hotel Rathaus Wein und Design
190 Euro a night

Things to See in Vienna:

Schloss Schönbrunn - the summer palace and a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Parliament

Museumsquartier

Karlskirche - The scary climb to the top was not worth 5 euro

Stephan’s Dome

Food and Drink:

Dine at a Heurigen (wine bar licensed to sell the new vintage)

Have a melange at a true Viennese Kaffee Haus (I did really like the Hawelka!)

Good Resources:

Wikitravel.org