A hop on hop off bus, a schnitzel bigger than its own plate, and the last stretch of a trip three cities in the making.
The wristband was right. Vienna behaved, mostly. Two cities and one entirely justified sleep deficit later, we did something neither of us ever does on holiday. We bought hop on hop off bus tickets and let Vienna do the walking for once.
The bus looped along the Ringstrasse, built after Emperor Franz Joseph ordered the old city walls torn down in 1857. It opened in 1865, lined almost immediately with museums and ministries all competing to look the most important, a habit the city never quite broke.
Off the bus near Stubenring, Field Marshal Radetzky was still on his horse, unveiled in 1892 and important enough to have his own Strauss march, one that still gets an airing at both the Vienna New Year concert and Austrian football matches. Behind him, a double headed eagle still guards the old war ministry roof, the empire long gone, the bird apparently under contract.
Lunch was schnitzel at Figlmüller, self declared home of schnitzel since 1905, where portion control has never once been attempted. The schnitzel arrived, then kept arriving well past the edges of the plate, one lemon wedge looking distinctly out of its depth.
We ducked into Krah Krah in the old Jewish Quarter next, a pub with over sixty beers on the list that still bothered to chalk up its priorities for the day. Soup of the day. Beer. Nothing else offered, nothing else required.
Coffee in Neubau arrived under a structurally ambitious amount of whipped cream, in the kind of café that explains why Viennese coffee house culture made UNESCO’s list in 2011, an entire city officially certified for sitting still.
Gelato followed, because the day apparently required a third dessert, chocolate from Zanoni and Zanoni, scooping from the same Stephansplatz corner since the early eighties. A quieter wander past the Naschmarkt in Gumpendorf gave us a fountain and rather more elegance than we had energy left to properly admire.
Dinner was back in Erdberg at Schwabl Wirt, the sort of rustic, wood beamed, red checked Gasthaus that never updated its decor and never needed to. Whole fish and rosemary potatoes on one side of the table, a well earned wine and beer on the other, and for the first time all trip, not a single Jägerbomb in sight.
After dark, the old town finally looked like the postcard. The Plague Column on the Graben glowed gold and white, built by Emperor Leopold the First as a two for one thank you, first for ending the 1679 plague, then for surviving the 1683 Ottoman siege. A few streets on, Stephansdom stood floodlit, its tiled roof finally getting the spotlight the daytime version never quite manages.
One last tram rattled past pastel buildings near Rossau on the way out, Vienna’s parting gift before the airport and one final Irish coffee, the same order that started at lunch in Budapest and quietly followed us the whole way. Prague gave us the history, Budapest gave us the party, Vienna gave us the excuse to do very little and call it culture.
Three cities, one trip, and more Irish coffee than either of us will admit to. Next up, this newsletter finally goes to the source, the UK, the original castle destination, England alone counting close to fifteen hundred of them and Wales adding several hundred more just to prove a point, and food that is, quite simply, top tier. It is the sort of place you can visit ten times and still leave feeling one castle short.
Your resident castle and cardamom enthusiast,
Arpita