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Three days to visit Vienna in 2024 (part III)
#vienna #austria #centraleurope #travelblogger #3dayitinerary
Vienna is a city of palaces, parks, and picturesque streets.
Vienna day 3 experience is one of the most magical and unexpected ones I had during this stay. Mind you, it was raining on and off for the most part of the day. Did I remember to bring along my Brussels raincoat, bought only a few days before? Of course not! And what does Courageous Wanderer do when it’s raining cats and dogs? Why, he enters a museum or any other cultural heritage building, of course.
If you want to enter any museum, or quite a number of various objects, you will need to have the tickets ready. Always do your homework, and buy the tickets up front. Otherwise, you may have to waste time in double lines.
The Belvedere Castle
On our last day of visiting Vienna, our first stop was the famous Belvedere Castle, famous for its gigantic garden, as well as the museum inside. It truly is something special. However, step 1 – remember what I just said about the tickets? You really want to have these ready up front. In fact, you also want to be timely. Our tickets were booked for 10.15 entry, and we were there at 10.05. Sad to say, we were obliged to wait another 10 minutes, until the tickets became valid. A few minutes is not a problem, but yet another heads-up – if you intended to come in the afternoon, do not switch plans and drop by at 12.
To be completely fair, I can talk about the content of the museum for hours. Not even for a few posts, but probably would be able to write a mini ebook about it. Rather than that, I will share some photos, and make you aware that this is where the famous “The kiss” painting by Gustav Klimt lives. You can buy a replica in the gift shop, and it costs only between 7-8 EUR / 7.5-8.5 USD. It’s a huge tourist trap, and only purchase according to plan, unless you care to spend immense amounts of money on replicas of famous paintings.
The Art & History Museum
The Kunsthistorisches Museum is quite a famous and well-visited building in Vienna. It is located near the Heldenplatz, where you can see the Neue Burg castle. The Natural History Museum stands opposing it, and it is equally as popular. Due to time constrains, we only decided to go for the first one. Always have your tickets ready, as mentioned, and spare time waiting in lines. Even though the skies were gray and the rain was falling most of the day, we got to conceal ourselves in these majestic edifices. Let me just mention that the Art & History Museum is a home to one of the fanciest cafés in the Austrian capital, many influencers choose to visit, for taking “instagramic” photos. We took amazing photos in the remainder of the museum, as the café was closed (just like the UFO one in Bratislava, a day earlier).
Again, countless works of art from different periods of time, as well as different geographies, can be located here. As someone who’s art classes in school were primarily boiling down to ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome, suffice to say I ran through these spaces without even the minimal interest.
On the other hand, some absolutely marvelous discoveries, were rooms with works of the Belgian and Dutch regions, such as Rubens (of Antwerp). Having just come back from those exact two countries, we found it absolutely magnificent to view in vivo some of the art that is not standard Central European. Particularly astonished with the city of Antwerp (as well as its famous Chocolate Nation museum), this revelation will persevere in our heads for quite some time in the future.
Christmas Markets
Again, I understand it is now a different season, but I am still surprised with how well-organized and maintained these seasonal experiences can be. Namely, I was not a fan of these, since I first heard about them (as you already read, in Berlin, 2018). However, the ones in Vienna really gave out a different impression of crowd (probably due to the fact it was Friday afternoon and night), unity and fun. You could find any kind of souvenirs, as well as seasonal spirit objects, such as mugs, caps, mittens, scarves, ornaments, you name it.
There is a special atmosphere in the air within these contained spaces of people having fun. It feels like a non-stop party, yet they don’t contain loud music, and no one is feeling obliged to dance and drink – everybody is doing whatever they feel like, in unison with what everyone else is doing, again, whatever they choose to.
What I used this crazed shopping & fun experience for, was to buy some souvenirs and of course, my favorite, Julius Meinl coffee. How much I force drinking this brand, I should be made their mascot and paid money to enjoy it (honestly). In fact, remember my friends from the previous post who went to Vienna and Bratislava? Guess what they brought me as gift.
Lovely things about Vienna
One would say we managed to cover quite some ground and see an enormous part of Vienna – and that would be exactly 0% untrue. However, as each other time, the Austrian capital is simply something different – it will give you a challenge to come again, just to go around some interesting places and objects not visited before. It feels like a perpetual craze to flow into the livelihood and love this city provides for its denizens and tourists alike. Our main conclusion was that this marvelous and magical city needs to be visited for one week each season of every year, at the bear minimum.
While I plot to organize some more travels in near future, what do you think, which parts of Vienna will be on my list now? Well, stay tuned.
In case you missed it
This is my fourth Vienna blog post (as of today). Although the four posts cover two separate occasions, I can never say that it is not all a part of a Grand Viennese Adventure. For those of you who missed my Vienna post, you can find them linked below, in chronological order.
Vienna – The cultural center of Europe
Three days to visit Vienna – part I
Three days to visit Vienna – part II
Thank you for supporting Courageous Wanderer!
As you probably know, I’ve been in Portugal, and the Lisbon adventure is being prepared as we speak.
As you probably don’t know, Courageous Wanderer is rolling out plans and roadmaps for some future adventures – to finish some of the projects long started and promised on this blog.
As it is maybe even more important to create the adventure than to write a story about it, new posts may be a little late and irregular in the following month. However, once the adventure is in the past, you will be so happy to read about it, you will not mind the potential publishing gaps. Feel free to guess where I will be off to in the following weeks – the most creative answers may just earn a spot within my mid-year interviews.
Thank you for supporting my hard work, leaving comments and sharing my posts with your networks. Together, we are making the world a better and friendlier place. Stay courageous, and stay tuned!
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