Friday, 16th January 2015
Whenever me and my husband visit our families back home, we try to take a short stop over on our way there or back. Short is about 3-4 days. This time on our way back from India, we planned our little stop over in Vienna, and I am so glad we chose Vienna. You`ll see why :)!
Apart from visiting a place, my second favorite part of the whole process is researching about the place, checking out maps, reviews, planning itineraries, the whole nine yards. It`s so much fun! I wouldn't mind doing that for a living, you know. May be one day I'll post about my process, which I am sure is not a whole lot different from most people out there, but that's a story for another day.
So anyway, we land in Vienna super early in the morning, go to drop off our luggage so we can have minimal stuff with us. But as luck would have it, the computer systems were broken, and they would not accept any luggage at all. So we took a cab, hauled all our luggage, and went to our temporary abode for 4 days. The place we chose was in Central Vienna, where all the action happens. We got a relatively early check-in, for a slight cost, which wasn't bad considering we were dirty and tired from all the traveling. We had breakfast in a cafe called Anker Snacks &Coffee. Thanks to our cab driver, we knew that the Austrian way to have a coffee is to get a Cafe Melange, so we ordered that. It is essentially a shot of espresso mixed with steamed milk and topped with foam. It was not very strong coffee. I especially liked the fact that since the milk was warm, the coffee didn't get cold as soon as it was handed over - a problem I generally encounter with my Tim Hortons cream-and-sugar coffee :).
We rested for sometime and started our planned itinerary sometime late afternoon. The temperature was about 2-3 degrees Celsius, and we had planned to walk. So we bundled up and started walking towards our first stop of the day - Museum of Fake Art or Faelscher Museum, as it was called. The museum was a huge disappointment - there were not enough artifacts, and it was rather uninteresting. It would have made sense for it to be a small section of some other art museum. Right across from the museum is the Hundertwasser House.
It was a one of a kind architecture of a building; the house was colorful and vibrant and gave a very friendly vibe. It felt like the building was a true artist's canvas, a player's playground. There were domes and triangles and curves and angles everywhere, uneven floors and bricks and mosaic and arches and colors, all made the building very unique and playful. We walked around the building, the only part of the building that we could see from the inside was a small cafe called Kunst und Cafe at one end of the building. The cafe was pretty quaint and bright. They had a short free documentary film of Hundertwasser playing inside it, which visitors were welcome to watch.
There was also a Hundertwasser Village very close to the Hundertwasser House. That was our next stop on the itinerary.The village is a collection of shops, all selling souvenirs, arts and crafts of Vienna. It was also inspired by Hundertwasser style of architecture. We had fun exploring the colorful village.
By this time we were pretty amazed by the works of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and the obvious next stop was the museum that displayed his art work - KunstHaus Wien. The building was a short walk from the Hunderterwasser Village, and was also designed by none other than Hundertwasser :)! We were inspired by this guy so we couldn't leave without seeing what kind of creative juices he had flowing. We checked out the permanent exhibition of the museum, which was his work. All in all, I believe he was a true artist, and I absolutely loved the vibrancy in his work, and the use of bright colors. He apparently didn't like straight lines, and that was demonstrated very well in his work. There were also a few models of other buildings and architecture he did, and I was would accredit him for his architecture more than his art, but that's a personal opinion.
After soaking in the glory of Hundertwasser's works, we decided to take a stroll down the Danube canal, that flows very close to this area of Vienna. We followed the Danube canal to Schwedenplatz, were we started seeing more life in the city. There was a hotel building across from the Danube that had some sort of a fancy light show going on it. All the bridges across Danube canal were pretty and lit up.
We grabbed dinner at a middle eastern restaurant Sababa. The food was decent and enough to satisfy our appetites after a long day of walking. Before dinner, we had seen a cafe that had some very eye catching desserts, so after dinner we were sure to catch dessert there. The place was called Gelataria Castelletto. Oh the guilty pleasures of the sweet tooth, we ended up ordering 4 different desserts!! The first two were the traditional Viennese desserts of Sacher Torte and some chocolate-covered-puff-balls-filled-with-creme-dessert-whose-name-I-forget.The puff balls, whose name I am so sad to have forgotten, were delicious!
We had extremely high expectations of the Sacher Torte because we had read so much about it, but it didn't do justice to our expectations. The cake felt dry, and the jam wasn't adding to the flavor in a good way. The top layer of chocolate was pretty tasty, though. We thought, may be, we have to try it from the "Hotel Sacher", from where the original Sacher Torte came to be, so that comes later.
After being let down by Sacher Torte, we settled on a mousse cake and some vanilla gelato. We didn't go wrong with these choices.
This was the end of our itinerary for day one. I thoroughly enjoyed walking in this pretty city. Every single building that we walked across was a treat for the eyes. You could feel the richness and the history of this city in its buildings. I was looking forward to the rest of the days in Vienna!
Whenever me and my husband visit our families back home, we try to take a short stop over on our way there or back. Short is about 3-4 days. This time on our way back from India, we planned our little stop over in Vienna, and I am so glad we chose Vienna. You`ll see why :)!
Apart from visiting a place, my second favorite part of the whole process is researching about the place, checking out maps, reviews, planning itineraries, the whole nine yards. It`s so much fun! I wouldn't mind doing that for a living, you know. May be one day I'll post about my process, which I am sure is not a whole lot different from most people out there, but that's a story for another day.
So anyway, we land in Vienna super early in the morning, go to drop off our luggage so we can have minimal stuff with us. But as luck would have it, the computer systems were broken, and they would not accept any luggage at all. So we took a cab, hauled all our luggage, and went to our temporary abode for 4 days. The place we chose was in Central Vienna, where all the action happens. We got a relatively early check-in, for a slight cost, which wasn't bad considering we were dirty and tired from all the traveling. We had breakfast in a cafe called Anker Snacks &Coffee. Thanks to our cab driver, we knew that the Austrian way to have a coffee is to get a Cafe Melange, so we ordered that. It is essentially a shot of espresso mixed with steamed milk and topped with foam. It was not very strong coffee. I especially liked the fact that since the milk was warm, the coffee didn't get cold as soon as it was handed over - a problem I generally encounter with my Tim Hortons cream-and-sugar coffee :).
We rested for sometime and started our planned itinerary sometime late afternoon. The temperature was about 2-3 degrees Celsius, and we had planned to walk. So we bundled up and started walking towards our first stop of the day - Museum of Fake Art or Faelscher Museum, as it was called. The museum was a huge disappointment - there were not enough artifacts, and it was rather uninteresting. It would have made sense for it to be a small section of some other art museum. Right across from the museum is the Hundertwasser House.
It was a one of a kind architecture of a building; the house was colorful and vibrant and gave a very friendly vibe. It felt like the building was a true artist's canvas, a player's playground. There were domes and triangles and curves and angles everywhere, uneven floors and bricks and mosaic and arches and colors, all made the building very unique and playful. We walked around the building, the only part of the building that we could see from the inside was a small cafe called Kunst und Cafe at one end of the building. The cafe was pretty quaint and bright. They had a short free documentary film of Hundertwasser playing inside it, which visitors were welcome to watch.
There was also a Hundertwasser Village very close to the Hundertwasser House. That was our next stop on the itinerary.The village is a collection of shops, all selling souvenirs, arts and crafts of Vienna. It was also inspired by Hundertwasser style of architecture. We had fun exploring the colorful village.
By this time we were pretty amazed by the works of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and the obvious next stop was the museum that displayed his art work - KunstHaus Wien. The building was a short walk from the Hunderterwasser Village, and was also designed by none other than Hundertwasser :)! We were inspired by this guy so we couldn't leave without seeing what kind of creative juices he had flowing. We checked out the permanent exhibition of the museum, which was his work. All in all, I believe he was a true artist, and I absolutely loved the vibrancy in his work, and the use of bright colors. He apparently didn't like straight lines, and that was demonstrated very well in his work. There were also a few models of other buildings and architecture he did, and I was would accredit him for his architecture more than his art, but that's a personal opinion.
After soaking in the glory of Hundertwasser's works, we decided to take a stroll down the Danube canal, that flows very close to this area of Vienna. We followed the Danube canal to Schwedenplatz, were we started seeing more life in the city. There was a hotel building across from the Danube that had some sort of a fancy light show going on it. All the bridges across Danube canal were pretty and lit up.
We grabbed dinner at a middle eastern restaurant Sababa. The food was decent and enough to satisfy our appetites after a long day of walking. Before dinner, we had seen a cafe that had some very eye catching desserts, so after dinner we were sure to catch dessert there. The place was called Gelataria Castelletto. Oh the guilty pleasures of the sweet tooth, we ended up ordering 4 different desserts!! The first two were the traditional Viennese desserts of Sacher Torte and some chocolate-covered-puff-balls-filled-with-creme-dessert-whose-name-I-forget.The puff balls, whose name I am so sad to have forgotten, were delicious!
We had extremely high expectations of the Sacher Torte because we had read so much about it, but it didn't do justice to our expectations. The cake felt dry, and the jam wasn't adding to the flavor in a good way. The top layer of chocolate was pretty tasty, though. We thought, may be, we have to try it from the "Hotel Sacher", from where the original Sacher Torte came to be, so that comes later.
After being let down by Sacher Torte, we settled on a mousse cake and some vanilla gelato. We didn't go wrong with these choices.
This was the end of our itinerary for day one. I thoroughly enjoyed walking in this pretty city. Every single building that we walked across was a treat for the eyes. You could feel the richness and the history of this city in its buildings. I was looking forward to the rest of the days in Vienna!
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