TRAVEL DIARY: 3 days in Vienna

Third stop of our trip: Vienna. We spent three days in this very cultural city. I’ll tell you all about what we were up to and what I thought of the city in this post.

Going to Vienna I was expecting something huge, a city full of wonderful buildings, so much culture and also an amazing atmosphere. Well, probably because we were coming straight from Prague, I was a little disappointed. With Prague, it was love at first sight so anything after would not have been able to surpass it. However, of course, Vienna is a wonderful place and obviously very interesting.

The first day, we arrived in the afternoon. We went to the Airbnb to leave our luggage. After that, we had a wander around town. We were quite surprised that everything was closed on a Sunday. The town centre is very nice. The buildings are grand and clearly show the wealth the city once had. For dinner, we had to get used to European prices again (therefore expensive).

On the second day we visited two museums: the Albertina and the Leopold. The collection of the first one is mainly impressionist painting and early 20th century art. They have some paintings by Kokoschka, Delaunay, Picasso, Macke… They also own a lot of graphic art and masters drawings.

The Leopold Museum focuses on art from the first half of the 20th century. They have a huge collection of Klimts and Schieles.

In the afternoon, I wanted to go to Schönbrunn. Although I was not interested in visiting the castle, it seemed obvious to go to see it from the outside. The park is enormous!

I was so damn hot and humid !

Going back to the centre, we went into St Stephen’s cathedral. It is very impressive. The roof is made out of colored tiles, beautiful!

We rented a room in an Airbnb on Liechtensteinstrasse. Every evening, as we walked from the U-Bahn stop, we saw this amazing church at the end of the street. It is the Votive church.

The next day we went to Budapest, I’ll have a blog post up soon about it.

On the last entre day we spent in Vienne, we went to the Belvedere. There was an Ai Weiwei exhibition a the Upper Belvedere and in the 21er Haus. There is also a permanent collection which includes most of Klimts major paintings.

Amazing view of Vienna from the Upper Belvedere.

Ai Weiwei chose to lay 1005 life jackets to remember the ones left by refugees on Lesbos island in Greece. They are displayed as an F Lotus.

Then, we went to the Landstrasse district to see the Hundertwasser house. I studied his architecture when I was younger so I was very interested in seeing his work IRL. You can clearly see he was inspired by Gaudi in his buildings, I love it.

Walking in the streets of Vienna, there are so many galleries like this one with little shops or restaurants. Thanks to them, it is easy to imagine what the city was like a century ago.

Last evening in Vienna means having a really not healthy treat…

I really enjoyed my discovery of the city of Vienna. Though I was expecting even more from this place, it has so much to offer culture wise. I would definitely come back to see more and probably go to the outskirts of Vienna. I also really want to go to Salzburg in the winter…

xxx

Emma.

LIRE CET ARTICLE EN FRANCAIS ICI.