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Any ideas on what to do in Vienna

My husband and I are in town from 5th to 8th September.
1.Could somebody let me know what are the major attractions there? I am at a complete loss on how to best spend time here , so any ideas on what all we can do would be awesome.
2.Is there any particular show or concert we can watch or attend while there .I was reading that marionette performances are there in Salzburg , which isnt something I have seen before , so if there is something special in Vienna also ,we would love to experience that .
3. Any day trips that can be done from Vienna ? We dont mind renting a car to drive out , but if it can be done with public transport all the better.
4. Could anybody recommend some good places to have lunch / dinner while in Vienna ?Even if its a bit pricy its ok , as long as the food is good. Any place where smart casuals would be accepted is great .

Posted by
2527 posts

There's so much information on this website that is helpful in planning your trip, including a guidebook for Vienna, Salzburg and Tirol.

Posted by
11056 posts

I assume you have a guide book? Schoenbreun Palace and/or gardens, Spanish Riding School,
St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna Opera House, Kunstmuseum(sp?) with wonderful collection of Bruegels, and the Sigmund Freud Museum in his former(before he fled Nazis) apartment.

Posted by
114 posts

No I didnt get around to buying the guide book for this trip . I do plan to get one for the next trip . I am looking at previous posts to come up with ideas .

Posted by
7010 posts

If you haven't already been there go to the Explore Europe section of this website: https://www.ricksteves.com/europe/austria.

For day trips, my favorite was the circle route - train from Vienna to Melk, boat from Melk to Krems, then train from Krems back to Vienna. There is also the option to stop in Durnstein and then bus to Krems to catch the train back to Vienna. Makes a great day out enjoying the Wachau Valley of the Danube. You can buy the tickets at the Vienna station that include the round trip train, entrance to Melk Abbey, and boat ride.

Another easy day trip is to visit Bratislava, Slovakia, just a short (<1 hr) train ride from Vienna and a chance to see a bit of a different city in a different country.

September in Vienna is a great time to visit one (or more) of the heurigers: http://www.tasteofaustria.org/the-heurigen-tradition/. You can search on this forum for suggestions of the best ones to visit.

Posted by
2599 posts

Much as I love the forums here, if you don't get a guidebook (which I highly recommend, visited Vienna twice in the past couple of years with a day trip to Salzburg and the Melk Abbey-Danube day trip and it got me through all of it with ease) the easiest way to quickly get an idea of what there is to see and do in a city is to check Trip Advisor under Attractions. Then you can sort out what appeals to YOU. My visits to Vienna were all about Secession era art, architecture and all things pertaining to my favorite movie, The Third Man.

Posted by
380 posts

I was just in Vienna a couple of weeks ago. Despite the intense heat, I had an amazing time. Here's some tips I posted on another thread:

What are your historical interests? I found a few unexpected treasures on my trip there last week:
Virgilkapelle (chapel/crypt from about 1200 and lost for centuries) located in the Stephansplatz Ubahn station.
Neidhart Frescoes, on Tuchlauben. Amazing frescoes from a banquet room, painted in about 1399 and rediscovered in 1979. Very rare, secular art.
The Romermuseum, showing the city's history as a Roman settlement in ~100-500 ACE.
The open-air museum of uncovered foundations in Michaelerplatz. Working on the Ubahn, they uncovered an area with overlapping foundation walls from three separate eras. They're on display now.
All of these sites, taken together, will give you an appreciation of Vienna's long history--it was a Celtic settlement before the Romans even got there. It seems like every time they go to renovate a building or dig a foundation, they find evidence of the past. All those pretty, fluffy, Rococo and Baroque and Biedermeier and Jugendstil buildings are on medieval foundations, if not even older ones.
Personally I am meh on palaces and royalty. They make me angry. I'm a lot more interested in the everyday lives of regular people. You'll see the biases of the Hapsburgs in the Kunsthistoriches Museum (which I still wholeheartedly recommend.) Take an extra hour and visit the stone age area of the Naturhistoriches Museum opposite the Kunsthistorichesmuseum for a rare peek into the lives of humans in Europe tens of thousands of years ago. It's rare to see artifacts like these in America; you really have to go to Europe to see them.
The Belvedere has a great exhibit on Klimt and Schiele, which gave me a new appreciation for them. But there's a piece sort of missing: right now, most of Richard Gerstl's work is in New York at the Neue Galerie. If you can, stop in and see that museum on your way to Vienna. The Belvedere also has an exhibit right now on Klimt's classical inspirations, but if you go see that, be sure to go to the Secession either right before or right after, because the Eroica frescoes are a pivotal part of that exhibit (so much so that they've created a partial replica at the Belvedere.)

Posted by
114 posts

Thanks everbody !
Nancy . I havent heard of heurigers before. It looks very interesting . Let me check out all the places you have mentioned too.
christa - I did miss out on the guidebook this time . I definitely plan to get the guidebook before our next trip. I am checking out Tripadvisor too now.
Astorienne - Let me check those out too.

Posted by
1875 posts

Regarding "Heuriger":

Read the (misspelled) thread "Huerigers" in this forum!

Posted by
7010 posts

This thread is a couple of years old but it was most helpful to me when planning my trip in 2014. I liked it because it gave good information about how easy or difficult the different ones might be to get to by public transportation.

Posted by
114 posts

That was such an interesting and helpful post . Thank you Nancy ! I am just working out which one works best for us.