I don't usually write trip reports, but we loved Vienna and a lot of what we loved came from Rick's guidebook.
We stayed at the Pension A and A and its amazingly convenient location made sightseeing easy. Sights were even closer than they looked on the map!
We arrived on Saturday afternoon and went to the Billa Corso supermarket at Neuer Markt to eat dinner-they sell hot food and have tables. Then we walked through St. Stephen's church.
On Sunday morning, a highlight of our trip was mass at the Augustiner Church. The building! The orchestra! The choir! Sublime! When I go to Vienna in the future, I will make sure I'm there on a Sunday morning. We spent most of the afternoon at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Eating in the cafe was a highlight-I think it's the most beautiful dining venue I've ever eaten in and my salad was really good. We went to Demel's after that. Vienna must be the cake capitol of the world!
On Monday, we toured the Hofburg Palace and ate at their cafe. We liked it so much that we ate there again on Monday. We went to the HausMusik that night, which my husband said was his favorite thing we did in Vienna. The one unpleasant thing was eating at Gigerl Stadtheuriger. Before sitting down, we asked if they took credit cards (we stupidly didn't have much cash with us). The waiter said they did if you spent 30 euros. That made sense, so we sat down for dinner, knowing that spending 30 euros would be no problem When it was time to pay the bill, they said you had to spend 50 euros and to go to the ATM around the corner, which promptly ate my husband's debit card. He asked to see the manager, who did then accept the credit card. When we went to the bank to retrieve the card the next day, the machine also ate the card of the bank customer who was trying to use it. So we did get our card back. On a more important note, to some of us, since this is not a sight that Rick feels the need to include in his guidebooks: The Cafe Neko cat cafe is diagonally across the street from the Gigerl.
Tuesday was our last day. We went to the New Palace Museums. The Austrian History part of the museum had a very interesting and chilling Board Game Juden Raus: "the first player to drive out 6 Jews from their businesses and bring them to a collection point outside the city won the game." That night my husband did the standing room thing at the Opera House and said it was wonderful. I didn't go because I don't like heights but when we go to Vienna again, we'll buy tickets.
My bucket list for the next trip to Vienna: Schonbrunn, the Melk Abbey day trip, a concert at the Opera House, and another mass at the Augustiner Church. We had no idea we would love Vienna so much-we only went there because Austrian has 3 flights a day to Tirana, Albania, where we were joining a tour.