Vienna General Tips by Audrey118

Favorite Thing: I guess when everyone goes to Europe, people think of castles, churches, art galleries and whatsnot.

I guess it is their culture, their history etc.
Vienna is much smaller than UK, has less musuems and art galleries than UK, but I still did not have enough time to visit them all!!! well I only had 4 days = and one day I want to set aside to shop.

It is very easy to move around Vienna - all you need is when you get out of the aircraft there will lots of booth, and sometimes they are manned, there is a very good flyer or pamplet on the city. I also suggest buying a 10 euro booklet on the Vienna tourist attracttion. And with a good map you can see a lot of its culture and history by foot.

Vienna has a majestic history with goes back to the Haspburg family, and with the wealth and great taste for art, and refined things, you have a feast of their artifacts, their beautiful castles, lots of churches and columns in thanksgiving from deliverance from plagues, and from war etc.

Lots of people go to Europe with ideas that all churches are the same. Having a guide book will tell you otherwise. Each church was built for a specific reason, and their architecture reflects the period, the background of the king etc. And there are lots of masterpiece artworks to admire. Like I said without a guidebook, going into them is like OK - this is a great piece of work!!!! I give you examples of St Charles Church, it was named after the patron saint Charles and after the king charles who commissioned it. And there is a great artwork depicting the saint at the altar. There are reasons for the trajan columns etc...and the angels that stood infront ot the church.

There is a lot of history in each piece of monument and how the road leads to another....you will be amazed by how things came about. I am no expert, and I think I will need a couple more trips to Vienna to discover and be dazzled by its beauty behind all this.


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Favorite Thing: Viennese are actually quite healthy people.
On one morning, I walked from the hotel to Schonbrunn Castle garden; I started the day early - I thought it was early around 6:30am, and there was a handful of people already on the street. It was a Sunday morning, and it when I reached the garden's gate, I already noticed there were several joggers. By around 7:30 am you could see lots of joggers, brisk walkers etc.

Fondest Memory: The garden is rather huge to walk, it is very pleasant, with slight gradient, and some paths are pebbled and steep so my feet was rather sore. You will see lots of squirrels, most are not too friendly. They will dance around your feet, and look for some treats, but they may even bite or scratch you - gosh their claws are pretty sharp!!! You may see some wild chickens also in certain part of the gardens.

Of course you get a magnificent view of the castle from the Gloriette (you can have coffee and cakes and feast your eye with the magnificent view of the castle and city from above), but what I enjoyed most was walking through the gardens, through the rose gardens (there was so many roses all kinds of colours - carrot colour, beige, yellow, orange, pink, some rambling, som tiny - they were awesome, and there is those high hedges - i wonder how it ever gets its trim!!!, and the magnifecent paths that has trees bowing to each other - a picture you always see in Vogue magazine with models clad in latest fashion and that is the background!!!

There are some ponds with some make shift wooden bridge for ducks to get across into the ponds, and water lilies .... the glass house, Palmerhouse which houses lots of plants and butterflies.. roman ruins with columns and obelisk etc..

I only spent 3 hours roaming around the garden - there and gosh - really enjoyed it.
You probably can spend even more hours there; there is the zoo (the oldest in the world) and also the castles, possibly opera at the castle... when I was there smack right in front of the castles, there were people putting up the stage, props, seats as there was a going to be a performance of the great opera Aida - the Egyptian princess...imagine the scene !!! and I hear during Xmas they have markets in front of it...and of course you can spend some time visiting inside the castle.

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