A Day Trip to Vienna, Austria | Recap

After a couple hours of driving around Vienna taking in all the sights that crisp spring afternoon had to offer, we hopped off the bus in search of one thing: lunch. I, specifically, was in search of one thing in particular: schnitzel. I had amazingly never tried it before, and yes, I knew it was essentially just really thin meat breaded and fried, but I wasn’t going to not get schnitzel in Austria. What kind of food blogger would I be if I did that?

We popped into a restaurant near one of the bus stops and found a nearly empty pub with dark wooden tables, shiny taps, and plenty of dusty, sepia-faded photos on the walls. I wasn’t worried they wouldn’t have it on the menu, but still I eagerly scanned each item until I found the words: “Wiener Schnitzel.” After a few freshly made soft pretzels and an almost too-dark beer, I dug into my schnitzel; it may have been the travel bug biting me all day, but for a simple piece of fried meat, it tasted even better than I imagined.

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Vienna, the gorgeous capital of Austria, is a city filled with beautiful architecture, delicate pastries, bustling markets, and adventures galore. We only spent a day here during the month we stayed in Bratislava, but it was a jam-packed day filled with bus rides and food stops and lots of wandering down lovely streets. I’m taking you through all the best parts of our visit to help you plan your next day trip to this awesome city–Vienna waits for you, after all!

GETTING TO VIENNA

We took a bus to Vienna since it was only about an hour drive from Bratislava, so we didn’t have to leave too early in the morning (win). We did get super confused, though, because the bus stop wasn’t super well-marked and was literally just on the side of the highway. After a few more people lined up with us, we felt a bit more confident we were in the right spot (and we were). The ride was very uneventful and we passed a lot of windmills.

Once in Vienna, we had to take the metro to the city center, which wasn’t difficult to figure out and only took maybe 10 minutes!

HOP ON HOP OFF TOURS

I probably sound like a broken record when it comes to these, but I don’t care: I LOVE HOP ON HOP OFF TOURS! I’ve taken at least five Hop On Hop Off bus tours while traveling and they are by far my favorite way to see a new city, especially if I only have a day to explore. You pretty much get full access to all areas of a city all day long, which makes exploring a huge city like Vienna so much easier than if you tried to navigate the metro or walk everywhere.

For this tour in particular, we started on the red route at stop 1 and rode the whole route before getting off for lunch. I like to ride a full route to start the day so I can see everything and decide which areas I want to get off at and explore more–plus it gives me a good chance to shoot uninterrupted with my camera and get a few shots of everything before wandering down streets and taking more intentional photos.

Before hopping on our first bus, we wandered around St. Stephen’s Cathedral and saw some beautiful buildings and shops lining the streets (pictured above). We got on the bus at stop 1, right near the Vienna Operahouse, and started our journey over toward the MuseumsQuartier in District 7. There are a number of beautiful museums here that, while we didn’t venture inside, looked incredibly gorgeous from the outside! Some of those museums and buildings are pictured below, like the Museum of Natural History and the Hofburg Palace.

From here we traveled up north a bit to pass by Sigmund Freud Park and the Votivkirche, a beautiful Catholic church. I didn’t get great photos because we didn’t stop right in front of the church, but the foliage looked pretty next to the arches and Gothic accents.

CROSSING THE RIVER

Just before we got up to the Danube River, we passed by the large amusement park, Prater. If we had more time in Vienna, I would have loved to spend more time there! I can’t remember if it was open or not, but it looked really interesting, with lots of old rides mixed in with new ones.

When it was time to cross the Danube River, we pretty much just made a big loop around the little island-like area of land and crossed back over the river. It was much more modern there, with tall business-y buildings with lots of windows and metal. I didn’t really take photos over the river, but there was a beautiful church on our way back over the bridge that I did shoot!

HOPPING OFF FOR LUNCH

That was pretty much the end of the red route, so we looped back around to our starting place and looked for a spot to eat. We landed on 1516 Brewing Company, which (while very empty) was a great little pub close to the city center that served good beer and even better schnitzel! The vibes there felt very British, like a classic pub you’d find walking through London or Belfast. It was a nice, slow lunch in the middle of an otherwise busy day. There are no shortage of great restaurants all over Vienna, though, so hopefully I’ll be back someday to try out some more.

EXPLORING THE MARKETS

Markets are my all-time favorite thing, I think, just in general. I absolutely love wandering through vendors and booths of homemade foods and trinkets, people watching as crowds shop and eat and mingle. I was too busy photographing the markets to buy anything, but the smells alone were enough to satisfy my sweet tooth cravings (keep scrolling for donut pics).

There’s something so weirdly calming to me about busy outdoor markets. Even though the environment is hectic and people are talking loudly and everyone is huddled together and bumping into each other and you have to keep your hand on your wallet just in case, I still feel this sense of slowness when I look around and take it all in. It’s like those movie scenes where the main character is in a huge crowd and everything is moving in fast forward around them, and then it switches to slow motion in a second–that’s sort of how it feels to me. I just love feeling insignificant, but also like a part of something bigger in those moments.

And I love trying cheese samples.

WANDERING STREETS

In true Travel Pals fashion, the latter half of our day was spent wandering down streets and finding anything that looked halfway interesting. We didn’t have a huge list of things we needed to do or see in Vienna–we mainly just wanted to explore at our own pace and meander around cool looking areas, so that’s what we did. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you half of what actual buildings we saw or streets we went down, but I had my camera out the entire time, snapping photos of some of the prettiest buildings I’ve ever seen just casually found on every street we walked down.

Vienna has no shortage of surprises when it comes to finding hidden gems down side streets. It seemed like every time we turned a corner, we were met with a gorgeous tower in view or a beautiful church or a lovely restaurant facade. If you have some time to kill, do what we did and just get lost down random streets and enjoy the simple beauty in the architecture here. I’d suggest starting in the central area, near St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and just wandering outward (but be smart and make sure you have access to Google Maps so you don’t actually get lost).

CAFE CENTRAL

Our last food stop before wandering a few more streets and heading back to Bratislava was Cafe Central, a restaurant famous for its well-known patrons (both good and bad). World leaders and intellectuals from Sigmund Freud to Leon Trotsky to Adolf Hitler frequented this restaurant, and it’s also known for its incredible, authentic Viennese food. Naturally, the line was out the door, but it was fast-moving and we ended up in a cozy booth in no time. We weren’t starving, so we got some drinks and desserts to share, including a traditional apfelstrudel that was honestly… just okay. The texture of the apples was really grainy for some reason, but paired with the whipped cream and ice cream it was still good. If you’re up for a probable wait in line, this was a nice spot to come and decompress before heading back out on the town, or in our case, back to the bus.

All in all, there’s so much to do and see in Vienna that I barely covered a fraction of it! I think it would have been lovely to spend a few days here just because the city is so huge–it has a population of about 1.8 million people–but if you only have one day here, it’s not too hard to make the most of it. Utilize public transportation heavily, or spend a little extra for the bus tours or guided day tours of the city. I truly think they’re so worth it!

To see more photos from our day trip to Vienna, check out my Vienna Photo Diary!