{"id":13770,"date":"2025-05-25T23:01:02","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T06:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/?p=13770"},"modified":"2025-05-25T23:01:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T06:01:02","slug":"vienna-austria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/2025\/05\/25\/vienna-austria\/","title":{"rendered":"Vienna Austria"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We left Budapest on a Railjet train from Keleti Station.\u00a0 And we were due for some, luck it was there an hour early so we could board, stow our luggage and enjoy comfortable seating while we waited to leave Budapest for Vienna.\u00a0\u00a0 For this trip we booked in Business Class, which was one step higher than or usual 1st class seats, for an extra \u20ac9.\u00a0 And they were very fine indeed.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead of being right across from your seat mate, you were staggered giving everyone a lot more legroom.\u00a0\u00a0 That was very nice feature,\u00a0 we have these booked from Vienna to Salzburg and from there to Munich four days later.\u00a0 From Munich we\u00a0 are back on EC type trains that are no where near as comfortable.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Tami &Scott booked a separate place in Vienna as their son Chas was in town, we booked a place that turned out to be about as bad as it could get.\u00a0\u00a0 The room was the size of a closet,\u00a0 a small closet.\u00a0 In order to sleep on the bed, the far person would have to climb over you.\u00a0 There was no other way to get to that side of the bed.\u00a0 This was nothing like the pictures of the room we booked.\u00a0\u00a0 To add to the ambiance there was a very noisy macerator placed just behind the toilet bowl that turned on as you flushed.\u00a0 Also, the place seemed like a fire trap,\u00a0 it was like a maze to get to the rooms, must have been 15 doors to go thru to get to the elevator and a few more doors to find the room.\u00a0 If there had been a fire in the night, I’m pretty sure there would be no chance of finding the stairs in the smoke, I looked for them but was unable to find which door they were with the lights on and no smoke! \u00a0 I started calling around and after a couple hours found another place for the 4 nights in Vienna and we Uber’d over there.\u00a0 For the same exact money we got a very nice hotel room about 5 times the size (a normal budget room)\u00a0 with a very nice bathroom and a shower about as large as ours at home.\u00a0 (5’x5′)\u00a0 It was also right next to a Tram stop.\u00a0\u00a0 The folks from the prior place would not give me my money back.\u00a0\u00a0 I am going to leave reviews of them everywhere I can,\u00a0 I felt like I was defrauded by their fake pictures.<\/p>\n

While working on finding a new place to stay I found a highly rated Mexican joint and we walked over and had dinner.\u00a0 We were pleasantly surprised by the food.\u00a0 Reminded us a bit of Chipotle back home.\u00a0 On the walk over I spotted a hotel that wasn’t on the google map for hotels.\u00a0 It was called the Orient Hotel.\u00a0\u00a0 I walked inside and it was an odd looking older hotel, lots of red velvet.\u00a0 I asked the guy over in the corner if it was a hotel and he said it was a “special” hotel, they only rented rooms for 3 hours at a time.<\/p>\n

Tue Next day we had great Goulash at a small sidewalk cafe a short tram ride from the hotel and later for dinner we found a Chinese joint that was really good.\u00a0 I had to figure out how the public transit worked in this new city.\u00a0 They don’t have tap 2 pay here yet.\u00a0 Each train has a ticket machine at in one of the front tram cars.\u00a0\u00a0 It worked well, but was a bit difficult to use as the tram is moving by the time you find it.\u00a0 There was a button for English and 2 senior tickets were \u20ac3 for your trip and most of the time the machine let you tap your card to pay.\u00a0 (tickets were only good for one direction of travel)\u00a0 not for a certain amount of time like in other cities.\u00a0\u00a0 After doing the ticket machine a bunch of times I decided to give the Phone App a try, it was much simpler and you could get the tickets prior to boarding so it was was easier to do right there at the stop while waiting for the next tram to arrive.\u00a0 (there were a lot of trams, they arrived never more than 6 minutes apart)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Wed, we took the tram down to the center of town and \"\"<\/a>wandered around the palaces and gardens till lunch time and then hit up a place I had wanted to go since seeing a video of it probably 25 years ago.\u00a0\u00a0 The City Center Cafe.\u00a0 It did not disappoint.\u00a0\u00a0 Quite a beautiful place and the food was excellent too.\u00a0 Our waiter seemed to be able to read our minds too, no small feat,\u00a0 I cannot remember that ever happening before, anywhere.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We had tickets to a concert in the Musikverein (Vienna Music Society) which turned out to be very odd.\u00a0\u00a0 There were two sections to the building and we were in a smaller venue with a small band, maybe 7 pieces.\u00a0\u00a0 It started out great but after 15 minutes they stopped and left taking their instruments.\u00a0 About 10 minutes later more performers came out than there were before and also a woman without an instrument.\u00a0 Turned out she was going to read us a book while the band looked on.\u00a0 Occasionally she would stop and the band would play 15-20 seconds of music and then she would start again.\u00a0 I have no idea what she was telling us, just a lot of guttural utterances.\u00a0\u00a0 We took off at intermission, which didn’t come quickly enough.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Thurs, we laid low today and snuck out for lunch to an amazing little Viennese joint. \u00a0 We got the mixed grill plate to share and I was shocked how much food they brought. \u00a0 We had a lot of leftovers, but no fridge to bring it all back to.<\/p>\n

Friday morning we packed up and hopped on the tram toward the Rennweg tram stop, got off and\u00a0 walked about 100 yards over to find the connecting tram stop. \u00a0 I thought the R3 was another tram or bus, but when we got to that tram stop I could see on schedule for that stop there wasn’t a R3 or similarly numbered tram or bus on the sign,\u00a0 rechecking G maps I could see I was not exactly in the correct place, very very close, but not quite on it.\u00a0 We had to backtrack a 100 feet and found a walkway that led to the entrance (completely unmarked) of a Metro station (Subway).\u00a0\u00a0 We fumbled around to figure out what platform by watching what direction the trains were going.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then an R1 train pulled in and I checked on the schedule,\u00a0 it too went to the Central Vienna Station and we jumped on.\u00a0 Kathy barely in tow.<\/p>\n

We arrived a few minutes later and proceeded to take a myriad of lifts and elevators to find platform 7.\u00a0\u00a0 We were a bit early so stopped at a cafe inside the station and I drank a Cafe Americano. (the closest thing to Coffee from home)<\/p>\n

We met Tami and Scott up on the platform were the mentioned they were in coach 37 (we were in coach 27) I asked if he was sure as earlier in the morning when I looked up the train configuration online there wasn’t a coach 37 listed.\u00a0 But there was a sign on the platform showing a coach 37.\u00a0\u00a0 When the train pulled into the station we could see there wasn’t a coach 37.\u00a0\u00a0 Luckily about 15 minutes later they added a bunch of other cars (another #27) and they were told that 27 was really 37 on the new additions so they got on for the 3 hour trip to Salzburg.<\/p>\n

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We left Budapest on a Railjet train from Keleti Station.\u00a0 And we were due for some, luck it was there an hour early so we could board, stow our luggage and enjoy comfortable seating while we waited to leave Budapest for Vienna.\u00a0\u00a0 For this trip we booked in Business Class, which was one step higher … <\/p>\n

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