Vienna: What I would recommend to friends as tourists

One friend will visit Vienna and asked me things I would recommend. I said oh I should have some blogs about it, let me check and send them to you. But when I checked, I realized that some of my favorited places have not been written at all. I think it is a typical psychology problem that one always waits until everything is perfect before doing ‘important’ work, and one might not reach this ‘perfect’ status for ever. Sometimes it is better off to just do it!

Anyway, for friends who visit Vienna for the first time, and are looking for somethings that are different with other cities, somethings very ‘Viennese’, my recommendation lists are:


1, Ringstrasse around Vienna old city.
Take tram around Ringstrasse (the round road surrounding old city) to have an overall impression. Tram line 1 includes more than a half of the Ringstrasse from north towards west until southeast and then it turn to more southeast towards Belvedere Palace, this part also contain most of the major architectures along the Ringstrasse. Very convenient.  It was said that Freud likes walking along Ringstrasse when he is thinking about his psychology.

2, Walking around Vienna old city. 
I enjoyed walking in the old city a lot. Perhaps Vienna is the best place for window shopping. I enjoyed the art people decorated the windows in their shops. Just wonder around those small alleys with ancient stone-paved paths. If you want to see more representative architectures in Vienna, the best route is getting off from tram at stop “Dr.-Karl-Renner-Ring”, which is in between Volksgarten and the city gate (the only surviving one). If you like garden, you should definitely stop by Volksgarten. Parks are usually good in Vienna but Volksgarten is my favorite. Especially in June when the roses bloom loudly, with all the colors! In May they also have wonderful peony. 





3, Schönbrunn Palace 
(https://www.schoenbrunn.at/) 
It is slight further from the city center, but convenient by U-bahn (city train). The movie of Princess Sisi helps to make this palace famous. There are a lot to see: architecture, garden, and probably the best-preserved in-door decoration in the palaces I have visited. Vienna has quite a few palaces, they all have nice gardens, and if you do not go inside it is always free. So without paying, you can already enjoy the Holy-Roman Empire Palace and garden. 



Across the garden from the main palace building, there is a small hill with zigzag tracks to go up. On the top of this 60 meters high hill there is a beautiful architecture with arches, alleys and terrace, called “Gloriette”. You can pay to go inside and go to the terrace on the second floor. But even without go out, you already get a very good city view from the hill. 



If you have time and like historical decorations and furnitures, I do recommend to take the tour inside the palace. There are two type of tours, one called Imperial Tour with 20 rooms, another one called Grand tour with extra 20 rooms. Some of these extra 20 rooms were from the legend Queen Maria Theresa, and they look impressively luxurious. As a Chinese, I was surprised but happy to see there are rooms with special Chinese theme. The shorter tour include Princess Sisi and her husband Emperor Franz Joseph’s rooms. Franz Joseph’s office is shockingly simple. I remember that there was a Sisi’s tiny status on the Emperor’s table. Very small details, but might show how much he loves her.

4, Belvedere Palace 
(https://www.belvedere.at/en)
Less famous than Schönbrunn as a palace. It was built as a summer residence for a Prince, but now became a really nice art museum. Again there are lots to see: architectures, garden, and paintings inside the palaces. There are two buildings: upper Belvedere and lower Belvedere, with a nice garden in between. 



In the upper Belvedere, you can see Gustav Klimt’s most famous paintings including “the Kiss (Lovers)” and “Judith”. Klimt is famous on his Golden paintings,  by developing a new technique to combine gold leaf with oil and bronze color in a creative way. 

Here are the Klimt collection in Belvedere: https://www.belvedere.at/jart/prj3/belvedere/main.jart?rel=belvedere_en&content-id=1439886441143&pid=1439886440654&reserve-mode=active. 

In lower Belvedere, they exhibit paintings post Klimt’ time, including some paintings from Klimt’s students. One of his student, called Egon Schiele, who I did not know before, his paintings look very interesting to me. I can see the Klimt flavor, but yet Egon has his own style, very unique style. He is also very good at drawing women with emotions, like his teacher Klimt. 

Referring to food, Vienna is very international. I found really good Asian restaurents inclusing Chinese, Japanese and Vietnams.  But if assuming tourists are more interesting on Viennese food, here is my recommendation:

Wiener Schnitzel and taferspitz are probably the two most famous viennese dishes. 
Classical restaurants with them: 

Cafe Imperial which is specialized for REAL Wiener Schnitzel (butter+beef, unlike the cheap version using oil and pork):  http://www.cafe-imperial.at/en/menu. 

Plachutta which is specilazed for taferspitz: https://www.plachutta.at/de/plachutta_wollzeile/. 

Personally I like the local small restaurants hiding in alleys much more than the classic ones, but many local good restaurants do not open in weekends or even late nights, not easy for me to explore. But below two are good:

Zur Herknerin http://zurherknerin.at/ , ran by a cute lady Stefania Herkner with her mother. The dish "Sarma" is recommended by Rick Steins in his BBC travel program. Only open in weekdays.

Zum Reznicek   http://zumreznicek.at/  This one is liked by all my the Austrian colleagues.  All dishes are tasty. Also only open in weekdays, and stop ordering food at 6 pm. 

These two family restaurants are both not far from city center, and a half cheaper than those big "touristing" restaurants.