48 hours in Vienna

What better way to start the New Year than with a weekend away? It was the inspiration of the moment: let's go to Vienna!

We arrived to the new Hauptbahnhof Main Train station when it was too dark, but the white geometric roof resembling a cardboard cloud was a great first impression of modern architecture in the imperial city par excellence (return tickets from Budapest: 29 euros each). The Hotel Daniel is close by, next to the Belvedere Gardens: an old building without personality was transformed into a hip, modern hotel, with sleek wood furniture topped by raw ceilings and visible pipes. We enjoyed a drink at the bar, relaxing to lounge music and planning our visit on maps and books.

Gosh, if you just want to sleep, then a pretty Airbnb house or Couchsurfing for free will do, but for me, the real luxury is being able to afford a hotel just for the breakfast (by the way, I think that at the Daniel you can have it as a brunch for 16 euros!). Boom baby, what a breakfast! A  smiling girl made us fried eggs and bacon, but how can you leave the smoked salmon and the salty butter on toast? And what about the curd cheese with olive oil, the creamy yogurt with "urban" honey, the bread with sesame seeds and jam?

We planned a clever path through the city, to visit new places and just pass by the classic sights that we already knew: from the Belvedere down to the Ring, strolling along towards the left by the Hofburg, the Parliament and the Rathaus, until the Votive Church; then back through the Jewish streets to St. Stephen's Church, getting lost in the streets, and finally dinner around Schwedenplatz.

Our first stop was St Charles Church, one of the masterpieces of Austrian Baroque style (entrance 8 euros). Our first comment was: they squeezed the dome!  Indeeed, it is oval-shaped. The second comment was: cool, a lift to the top! Indeed, it looks like there is restorations going on, but it is just a horrible elevator in the middle of the church. But it is absolutely worth it, after you have a close up with the celestial paintings on the dome and take in each single tiny brush that composes that masterpiece. Next stop: a cube of Sacher cake at the original Sacher Café, behind the enormous Opera house, to fuel up with chocolate, warmth and happiness (16,20 euros in total). The wide and proud Ring Avenue is the high point of Imperial pride, so it felt nice to reach the Imperial Palace (Hofburg) from a narrow back street. Our next stop was the Austrian National Library (7 euros each): its State Hall was absolutely magnificent. Remember the library from Disney's The beauty and the Beast? Well, put Baroque glowing frescoes on the ceiling, an unbelievable collection of books from the 1500s to the 1800s, a hidden passage, and four enormous historical geographical globes. I was literally jumping from one side to the other (luckily the ropes kept me away from the actual books), trying to read the titles, imagining scholars during the past centuries coming in with candles and poring over books written centuries before by monks and philosophers... Absolutely marvellous.

St. Charles Church

Vienna Opera House

National Library

Even though we already knew the Ring Avenue, our stroll along it was much more interesting with a book guiding you through the centuries. We left the very imperial Hofburg, a wide and imposing statement of Baroque power; we passed in fron of the twin museums, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Science Museum, with their neo-Renaissance squared sturdiness surrounding the statue of Maria Theresia; further on, the Parliament boasts a Neo-Ellenistic style complete with an Athena statue in front of it; close by, the Rathaus is a Neo-Gothic marvel of acute arches and windows reaching up to the central tower. And all of them were built in the same period, between 1770 and 1790! We finally went inside the Neo Gothic Votive Church, still quite dark and dusty outside, but very vertical and neat inside, illuminated through vivid stained glass windows.

Austrian Parliament

Rathaus, Vienna City Hall

Votive Church

Graben with St. Stephen

We wandered back to the city center without a real aim and ended up with tea and strudel in the Braunerhof cafe, close to the Spanish Horseriding School of the Hofburg. By 4, the Christmas lights were on in the Graben Strasse: the luxurious couture boutiques were illuminated by chandeliers hanging in the middle of the walking street, leading to the heart of Vienna, St. Stephen Cathedral. In an attempt to postpone a beer and/or dinner, we kept wandering in the narrow streets and galleries west of the Cathedral, past a hidden Orthodox Church, slowly making our way to Schwedenplatz, where we were to find the famous Bermuda Triangle, an area of bars and restaurants. Early as it was, nobody was around, we ended up in the Krah Krah bar, which -Thank God- has a separate non-smoking area! Eventually, we decided to go back to the hotel for dinner and were rewarded with a most satisfying, delicious and enormous 1.2 kg steak.

Upper Belvedere

Cultural Sunday morning at the Upper Belvedere Museum, which houses a collection of Austrian painters. The palace was built by/for the Prince Eugene of Savoy, For 13 euros, you will travel through a fascinating exhibition in a gorgeous Neo-Baroque building, ranging from incredibly realistic Medieval religious altarpieces, to incredibly detailed natural paintings, until quite recent masterpieces from the 19th Century in Biedermaier, Romanticism and Impressionist style. The contrast between the baroque period and the early 1900 is striking: the first boasts the tiniest details of clothes texture, waterfall foam, rays of light, while the latter is upsetting, broken and confused. My favourite was the visionary Klimt: "Lovers" occupied a whole wall, in its majestic, bright and glittering details, and next to it there is "Judith", desirable, inviting and slightly scary.

Altogether, it was a very pleasant, relaxing and energizing start of the year. To be repeated soon!