Vienna, Austria

What a dream to wake up in a luxurious hotel room in Vienna, Austria. This hotel is by far my favorite hotel. The staff has been super friendly and nice. The room itself makes me feel like a Viennese Empress. I mean how many hotel rooms have a chandelier with high ceilings, fabric on the walls, heated towels, and all the little extras. There is even a bidet if that’s your jam. The saddest part about this hotel is that we are only here one night. We checked out of the hotel to explore the city, and the hotel gladly stored our luggage.

Our first stop was to the visitor center to pick-up a Vienna Pass. This is our key to tourist exploration. We then walked over to the opera house to catch a ride on the hop-on hop-off bus. This was my first time going on one of these buses. There were headphones onboard and each seat had a plug so that a British narrator could tell you all about the city. The bus took us to the Schönbrunn Palace. We stopped at the box office to collect our tickets with the Vienna Pass. The pass only gets you access to part of the tour and it’s an upcharge for the grand tour. We opted to do the included tour, but after experiencing, I recommend doing the whole tour. The part we did was such a small portion. You could easily spend your entire day here with the palace, gardens, and zoo. We are boarding a ship today and want to see more of the city, so this visit was short.

Schönbrunn Palace

We took the yellow line bus back to the opera house to compete our circuit and explored more of the city. We walked to St. Stephen’s Cathedral for a quick look then it was time for lunch.

Saint Stephen's Cathedral

Reinthaler's Beisl was the Austrian restaurant we chose. We waited in line for a table and after a relatively short wait we were seated inside. Part of me wanted to order wiener schnitzel, but I don’t like veal. They also had a reinthaler-schnitzel which was basically the same thing with pork. It was really good and served with potatoes. We tried each other’s meals, and it was a really nice experience.

Reinthaler's Beisl

We walked around the city stopping in delicious shops with bites to eat. Walking around this city feels like walking through a fairy tale. The buildings are majestic with horse-drawn carriages and classical music sprinkled throughout.

City Sights

Eventually it was time to leave Vienna and board our ship! We are sailing Viking Rinda and began our journey with Viking with a delicious meal!

Part of what made this day so special was hanging out with such a great group of friends. We laughed so hard we cried today.