Things to do in Vienna

Recently i went to Vienna, i was actually going over for a work thing, our big Sales Kick Off Meeting, but i was lucky enough to take a few personal days before the event and brought Tan, my blogger bestie with me to enjoy the city.

Top things to do in Vienna?

Take a day trip to Bratislava

Ok, so this is a bit of an odd one, i'm saying to leave Vienna and go to another country! However Bratislava is about an hours drive from Vienna and is a beautiful city with some great things to see. They also do great wine tours (so i would told by my American colleagues who did it). It cost us around £45 each, we got picked up at our hotel, and it turned out it was just us on the tour so we had a private taxi take us, we were meet by Maria our walking tour guide who gave us an hours tour around Bratislava and then we had a few hours free time to explore before being picked up and whisked back to Vienna.

Visit the Spanish riding school

The Spanish Riding School of Vienna, is a traditional riding school for Lipizzan horses, which perform in the Winter Riding School in the Hofburg.

There are two types of tickets for the Spanish riding school:

The morning practice session - This was two hours long and to be honest, a little boring, it was interesting for the first bit but it was quite repetitive.
Tour of the Spanish riding school - Here you got to look around the Spanish riding school and go over to the stables to see the horses. If you are pushed for time, i would recommend doing this tour.

Visit the palaces

Vienna has a rich historical past, being the Capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and where the Habsburg dynasty lived. Meaning it has fantastic palaces to visit. We got the Sisi ticket, which allowed us entry to Schönbrunn Palace and the Hofburg Palace.

Enjoy the Café Culture

Although many countries can boast about the quality of their coffee, Vienna, Austria has elevated the beverage to an art form and its consumption to a lifestyle. By purchasing a single cup of coffee in one of the city’s grand old cafes, customers can spend entire days amongst a charming ambience and variety of patrons, making the Vienna coffee house an integral part of the city’s social experience.A trip to a Viennese café is a special event. Waiters wore tailcoats, and cafés featured marble tables, plush velvet couches, and elegant chandeliers.

We visited Café Central - A revolutionary (Trotsky), a psychoanalyst (Freud), several writers and poets (including Polgar, Zweig and Altenberg) and an architect (Loos) walked into a café. What sounds like the start of a joke was an everyday occurrence at Café Central (est. 1876). Over coffee, cake and the odd cigar, some of the greatest poets, philosophers and – it has to be said – storytellers the world has ever seen, got together in Vienna’s most attractive coffeehouse.

and Café Demel- It was in 1786 across the now former Royal & Imperial Hofburgtheatre that confectioner Ludwig Dehne opened his confiserie, which almost instantly flourished into a success story. By the time the confectionery became the Demel that we know and love today in 1856, it had already become a hotspot among aristocrats and Vienna’s bourgeoisie.

Maybe don't do the Ferris Wheel

When you google things to do in Vienna, the Ferris wheel is mentioned and it is seen as an icon of Vienna, so we had to do it. Well, it was probably one of the most terrifying things we've done. We got a tram to the station nearest the Wheel and lets just say, it wasn't a very nice area and me and Tan hot footed it out of there before we were mugged or worse. Approaching the theme park where the Ferris wheel is, a man stumbled out of some bushes and scared the shit out of us and soon we were in what looks like an abandoned theme park that you would see in a horror movie. We made it to the Ferris Wheel, and i can only describe it as sheds that you climb in, and they sway, oh my do they sway. We had the shed to ourselves, which was probably a good thing as it was a proper squeaky bum moment for us both. We just sat glued to the bench in the middle uttering the occasional swear word. Not a highlight of our trip. But one we can laugh about now.

Eat the biggest pizza i have ever seen

We stumbled across L'Osteria while roaming around the city centre, little did we know what a treat we were on for, we later found out it has won the best pizza place in Vienna for the last few years.

The pizza was huge, the fork is for scale. And it was bloody delicious.