In late April of 2022, I went for a weekend in Vienna, Austria with a friend. We booked the trip as a quick getaway from Friday to Monday. I didn’t know a lot about Vienna before I visited, but I’d heard great things about the city from friends and had seen some beautiful pictures of the famous Schönbrunn Palace. I also spent a lot of my teenage years learning German, so thought it would be a great place to practice my language skills.
The first thing we noticed when arriving in Vienna was how vast the transport system is. There are a few ways of getting around the city, by U-Bahn (underground train), S-Bahn (overground train), tram or bus. You can jump on the S7 from the airport and arrive in the city centre in around half an hour.
Tourists can purchase a Vienna City Card for a period of time (either 24, 48 or 72 hours), which gives you access to the transport network, as well as discounts in many of the main tourist attractions. One thing that particularly intrigued me is that there are no barriers or ticket checks on public transport, it operates as an honesty-based system – although there are the occasional spot checks so do make sure you buy a ticket!
We stayed in an Airbnb outside of the inner city, on Rafaelgasse. It was in a lovely area, with a long street of cafes and bakeries – the Mozart torte is a must-try if you visit a bakery, but the Aida torte was my personal favourite. Rafaelgasse is a short walk from the Danube canal, which you can walk down into the centre of the city in about 30 minutes. Along the river were a number of quirky bars, where you can grab a drink with a beautiful view.
Since we only had a few days to discover Vienna, we created a short itinerary, covering our key areas of interest. Below, I’ve outlined 3 of the stops we visited on our trip – in my opinion, these places shouldn’t be missed!
1. Exploring the city centre
We spent our first full day in Vienna exploring what the city centre has to offer. The historic centre (Innere Stadt) is compact and easy to get around on foot. The architecture is extremely beautiful and there are a number of magnificent buildings to discover. Key buildings to see include the Hofburg (a historic palace), St. Stephen’s cathedral and the town hall (Rathaus). A short walk from the historic centre lies Belvedere palace, which has vast gardens that you can explore – with lots of pretty flowers!
2. Schönbrunn Palace
Schönbrunn Palace lies a little further out from the centre but is well worth a visit – this is one of the most amazing palaces I have ever seen, as it boasts an extensive network of gardens that you could spend hours wandering around. You can also walk up a hill opposite the palace to gain panoramic views of the palace and gardens. On the hot, sunny day we visited, this short walk felt like quite a task but the views were magnificent. You walk up a zig zagging route past a huge water feature, where you can observe the palace through the flow of water, and then onto to a large pond at the top of the hill.
3. Bratislava, Slovakia
Once we’d explored the top spots in Vienna, we decided to take a trip to Austria’s neighbouring country, Slovakia. The train journey between Vienna and Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, only takes an hour and costs about 20 euros for a return ticket. The city of Bratislava is small and walkable, which we easily managed to explore in the day we had there. The most prominent tourist attraction is Bratislava castle, which sits on a hill overlooking the city. The castle is so striking and the interior is bright white and gold. This was my favourite place we visited the whole trip – I would really recommend visiting Bratislava whilst in Vienna if you can! For the rest of the day we explored the city, tried some Slovakian potato dumplings, visited a famous blue church, and climbed to an obelisk memorial (Slavín), a resting place for soviet soldiers.
In summary, although our trip was short, we were able to thoroughly enjoy and explore Vienna and Bratislava in just one weekend. Vienna is the perfect city for a weekend getaway and if you include the 3 key stops described above, you will see a variety of unique and beautiful places, unlike anywhere else.