Blog ≫ 2025 ≫ Holiday 2025 - Vienna
Second stop on our grand eurotour holiday 2025, and it's Vienna, Austria. Odd sort of place for a Summer holiday, but it's central to all the other places, well connected, and there's one particular feature the family were interested in here.
We left Budapest-Keleti at 13:40 and from my picture of the screen on the train I can see we would travel through Budapest Kelenföld, Tatabánya, Győr, Mosonmagyaróvár, Hegyeshalom, and to Wien Hbf at 16:17. That's Austrian / German for Vienna train station. I hope I got all those accented characters right, unlikely.
It was not a smooth journey though really. We were on the train early and got good seats together. Some reserved, fair enough, some not, so we sat where we could. Before we'd even set off we got moved by someone who'd reserved the seats since we sat down. You can do this on this line. I couldn't figure out how so we just found more seats, but then got moved again. Third seats lucky, we didn't all get moved again, but we were in constant fear of being shunted which made it not super relaxing.
Not a long walk to our hotel. I let the others settle in and went out for a walk to find somewhere for dinner. Right nearby I saw a place that looked quite good, and the name was familiar... It was Zweitbester, and lo and behold it was the same place I had been on my previous visit, back in 2022. A coincidence that we were near it now, as I don't think it was near where I stayed last time. We didn't go in here in the end, I found The Vienna Naschmarkt:
Vienna’s best-known market has around 120 market stands and restaurants for a colorful culinary offering ranging from Viennese to Indian, from Vietnamese to Italian. The Naschmarkt has developed into a meeting point for young and old. The Flea Market on Saturday is already a cult event.
It looked like a christmas market really, but in a long strip, and I thought we're sure to find somewhere to eat. We did, we had traditional Viennese cuisine somewhere along here and it was pleasant. Austrian food is not so big on the vegan experience but I had a cabbage pasta dish that was interesting and traditional apparently. The others had schnitzel sort of thing but avoiding the veal.
The hotel was good, a Holiday Inn mini suite really, plenty of room for us, though in a small hotel. Breakfast was good, even had sparkling wine / bucks fizz. It was a bonus to find this was included, we thought we must surely have opted for a cheapo no breakfast offer.
Next day the highlight of Vienna for the others, the zoo! I'm not a big zoo fan, but this was supposed to be good, and it was. It has all the big names. Our first encounter was with a koala, then hippo, penguins, and a POLAR BEAR! Penguins and a polar bear in this thirty degree heatwave?? Also, I'm sure it said a polar bear could jump quite a distance, more than the height of the wall round his enclosure. It was only the heat stopping him eating us alive I think. It was nice to see, but also super sad, I'd rather not have seen him and known he had not been dragged half way across the world to be gawked at. There were elephants, tigers, lions, and giraffes, who could better cope with this weather, but still they didn't look ecstatic to be there.
Had a nice break for a drink in the main central posh bit of the zoo park. Not a chimp's tea party. Actually I don't remember seeing any apes at all, that's probably good. I'll find a picture.
The highlight of the zoo for everyone was always going to be the panda. They love a panda! It was very shy and sad at first. I think there were two pandas, but sure we only saw one. We saw one of them looking a bit listless and sad before our drink break, but on our return it had livened up a bit and was properly posing for the camera after a while.
We headed back into central Vienna and got a tram, as a way of seeing around the city without getting a tour bus. We couldn't really see that much from the tram, though it was fairly nice. Plan was to get one tram up to one part of town, then another one back again in a bit of a circular route taking you past all the places you need to see. We got off half way round though and had a bit of a walk to a bar. We sat overlooking the not-the-Danube stretch of water that I'd sat at on my previous visit. The bar was sort of connected to a big boat moored here, and they were advertising mini river cruises to Bratislava. We'd already planned to get the train to Bratislava the next day, but would it be better by boat? Yes, yes it would! Could we do it though? No, no we couldn't. All booked up. So back to plan A.
That night we trekked around looking for pizza. Found a place that sounded promising but was a confusing buffet type set up when we got there, so we didn't say. Instead went to Mama Leone which did the sourdough type pizza we like, with cocktails, lovely. They served the pizzas with scissors to cut them up instead of a pizza wheel, very sensible.
We came back through the Naschmarkt on the way home to a place that was extremely unpleasant, a so called Italian wine bar that was dreadful. Vienna tourist board you need to stamp down hard on places providing a bad experience for tourists! At the time I said on the chat:
Just been to the worst place ever, supposedly Italian wine bar in the market here. Thought I wasn't going to get out alive. Glad I insisted on knowing the prices part way through a round, thirteen euros for a lager I didn't ask for, let's just stop the rounds now, and this one I haven't opened I'm not paying for, how's that? Not Italian, suspect East European gangsters shaking down tourists.
Not the wurst place ever, lots of wurst places in Vienna. But the worst.
On that note, we will briefly leave Vienna in the morning so I'll stop.
Sunny intervals and a fresh breeze, 13 - 21℃.
⬅️ Got Suede tickets :: Health stats 28/8/25 ➡️