Vienna - Austria

I didn’t really know much about Vienna-Austria, but I fell in love with this city after spending just three days there. Let me tell you that a lot of this blog and my pictures for Vienna consist of PASTRIES – since Austria is known for them. (Or I just really have a sweet tooth). The trip started with me being the only person out of 8 to check a suitcase in. FINALLY we were going to travel on an airline that didn’t have restrictions where I could only bring a backpack unless I wanted to pay like $40. The short plane ride also gave us a snack – “toasted wheat bread with cottage cheese and slices of tomato”. One bite and I was done. We got into Vienna at about 11pm, but we were all kind of hungry. We walked around and found an open restaurant. I ordered a mushroom and potato soup and an apple strudel. While I really was enjoying the soup, I quickly realized it had some kind of meat in it – oops. I “returned” the soup and demanded I don’t pay for it….which I didn’t. The apple strudel is really well known in Vienna, and it was really good. It was warm and came with vanilla ice cream.

We began the next morning with BAGELS. Everyone was excited for this because Italy has no bagels and is not big on breakfast. I got a bagel with egg and cheese, which was extremely satisfying. Next, we ventured into the city part of Vienna and came across the Stephansdom. It was an intricate gothic church that basically towers over Vienna. We climbed over 300 stairs to get to the top of one of the church’s tower, and got to see a great view of Vienna. Although, it was nothing comparable to the duoma view in Florence. Afterwards, we walked around and visited a few more churches and random monuments. Vienna has two big palaces, one of them being Hofsburg. We walked around the area of the palace, which was really pretty and we made plans to come back the next day to tour the inside of it. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping around in Vienna – there was a forever 21 store, which was really exciting since I haven’t visited one in over a month. I only bought a necklace because nothing seemed super appealing. For dinner we went to a restaurant called Figl-Muller, which was suggested in guidebooks to have the best wiener schnitzels. (This is fried veal). I obviously was not eating any since I don’t eat meat, but all my friends were super excited to try it. It looked really good, but I was content with the potato salad and greens that I ordered for dinner. Afterwards, we stopped at a chain bakery store called Aida for some dessert. Aida is decorated in cheesy pink and white colors, but it had some great pastries! I decided to buy two since I had only had a light dinner. I got a fruit tarte looking dessert and a sacher torte. The sacher torte is a dry chocolate cake with chocolate frosting mixed in with jam. It is apparently considered “the classiest chocolate cake in the world”. Both of the pastries were good, but not the best that I have ever had. (Starting to become a pastry snob).

That night we wanted to go out so we headed to the nearest DESPAR (name for grocery stores throughout Italy and some of Europe). I picked up 3 different Austrian beers to try, and they were all pretty good. Italy doesn’t require you to be of a certain age or have an ID, so we all headed out to a bar without any identification only to get to the bar and realize that they weren’t going to let us in. I was pretty mad and made the usual snobby comments to the bouncer, but we had no choice but to trek back to the hotel. Apparently, Austria works more like the US. We made a pit stop at McDonald’s for some snacks and  “emergency” bathroom usage. (We’ll just leave it at that).

The next day we woke up and decided to hit up the Naschmarket for “brunch”. It is a very famous market in Vienna that has dozens and dozens of food and flea market type of stands. The first thing I did was buy a pastry – a poppyseed glazed roll…which was really good! This market also had several small shops, restaurants and other street vendors. I was shocked to see that there were Indian products everywhere. I was so happy when I saw some of the stands selling falafel. How I had missed spicy food that was NOT Italian. The market also handed out tons of small free samples of things like dried fruit, olives, vegetables, meats, etc.

After brunch we headed to the Belvedere Palace – which was absolutely gorgeous. We spent a lot of time taking pictures here. I really wanted to tour the inside, but came to learn that it consisted mostly of paintings and we wouldn’t get to see any of the personal things like bedrooms and such. Afterwards we walked back to the Hofburg Palace and took a tour of the inside. We viewed the living apartments of Emperor Francis Joseph and his wife Empress Elizabeth. They had most of the original furniture and many things such as the empress’s jewels, letters, and clothes preserved in show cases. We did a walking audio tour, and it was really interesting to learn about the Empress Elizabeth’s life, including her tragic death that occurred when she was killed at a young age. While the furniture looked very royal, I was surprised to see that the rooms were all much smaller then I would have anticipated. We also viewed hundreds of pieces of gold, silver and bronze silver wear that was used by the rich people in Vienna, or given as gifts to famous Austrian government officials. After touring the palace, we did some souvenir shopping for postcards and chocolate. Austria is home of Mozart – and there are these famous chocolate candies called Mozartballs that EVERYONE was obsessed with. I did not find them as tasteful as the others did, so I stuck to just trying one and saving my calories for the pastries.

For dinner, me and a couple other girls went to a pub called 15/16 for veggie burgers and it was FANTASTIC. Afterwards, we walked to the Rathaus – which is a really pretty towns hall building that has a gigantic ice rink in front of it. The building literally looks like a palace and is even prettier during the night. There were also food vendors, drink vendors and people playing musical instruments around the area. We spent a few hours just hanging out here, people watching, and drinking hot wine with cinnamon. It was one of those “happy moments” where you realize how much you love your life.

The next day we had a late afternoon flight back to Rome so there was not time to do too much. There was a Marilyn Monroe exhibition close to our hotel, and I really wanted to go in and explore but nobody else wanted to so I gave up on it. Some day!!!! The day began with a visit to Aida for some good pastries. Vienna is known for plum pancakes, but since I never got a chance to try those I decided to get the next best thing – a plum turnover. It was really good, and one of my favorite pastries from Vienna! Afterwards, we walked to the Hunderwasser House and Museum. Hundertwasser was an artist famous for his abstract art. His house was kind of cool to see, but not worth the walk over. As we started to head back to the hotel, we saw Vienna’s amusement park which is home to the world’s oldest working Ferris Wheel. It was about to rain, and everyone knows how much I hate rain. Me and a few other girls quickly hailed a taxi and went back to our hotel.

Before heading to the airport, we decided to do lunch in the bagel shop again. I got a bagel and some tea – I’m really starting to become a tea person these days (YAY LESLIE). We were kind of running late to the airport – and some of the girls were really stressed and freaking out about missing the flight. Somehow I’ve become a calm and laid back person on this trip, and the only thing that’s really freaked me out or made me upset is sleeping in the hostels for my first two travels. Even with my checked bag, unorganized purse full of travel documents, and new leather boots that are hard to zip and unzip – I was the first one to get through all of security and be checked in. We made our flight perfectly fine, and I even had time to buy a really good chocolate candy bar before boarding the plane back to Rome.

Yes, I realize that all these sweets are not doing good things for my body.