Vienna; Saturday, 25 January, 2020

Another water torture shower first thing and then down to a relatively empty breakfast. I headed out of the hotel and over to the Staatsoper – the city opera house – to pick up one of the hop-on-hop-off tour buses that serve the city. The company I chose offered four different tour routes on a 48 hour ticket so I brought that and was able to quickly joint the start of their main Red Route tour.

The Red Route runs around the main centre of the city – following close to the Ringstraße most of the way round, but diverting off in places to visit interesting sites. I did a full loop of the route and then stayed on for a couple of stops to the Votivkirche.

The church was built, in part, in celebration for the failed assassination of the Emperor and was designed to be the tallest building in the city, Today it’s still the second tallest building on the Ringstraße – technically it’s the tallest building, but the 5m high statue on the top of the Rathaus brings it’s overall height to 4m above that of the church. I had a look around inside the church which is a cavernous space given it’s size.

I was mostly looking round the church to fill in a bit of time as I was also at the location where the infrequent Green Route tour departs from. In the winter there are only 3 departures a day and I was aiming to get the second of these. There is just the one bus running the route and it had clearly gotten a little delayed on the first tour of the day as it was nearly 15 minutes after the timetabled departure time before it arrived. As a result a number of people waiting had given up and picked up the Red route instead so I was able to get the top front seat for good views.

The Green route heads North out of the city centre to the area of Grinzing. This wine producing area used to be its own separate village but has long since been subsumed into Greater Vienna. The bus runs through the pretty centre of the town, past many of the wine lodges that the town is famous for. From Grinzing the bus climbs up into the hills to the panorama view point at the top of the Kahlenberg.

It was pretty obvious, as the bus started the climb, that this was a bit pointless as we were soon enveloped by the clouds as we reached the lower level of the misty murk that had been hanging over the city since yesterday. At the top visibility couldn’t have been more than 100m so we just had to imagine the view that the bus tour commentary was telling us about.

The tour returned back to the city centre, where at least the visibility was a little better, though it did appear to be slowly decreasing. Back at the opera house I changed onto the Yellow route, again managing to bag the all important front window seat for this tour which headed out west from the city centre past the West Bahnhof and out to the Summer palace of the Imperial court at Schloß Schönbrunn. Though by the time we got out to the palace the fog was really starting to close in, which combined with the rapidly setting sun meant it got increasingly difficult to see many of the sites as we headed back into the city centre.

I arrived back at the opera house just as the queue for the night tour was starting to form, so I quickly joined that and after about 30 minutes of waiting got a decent seat towards the back of the bus for my final tour of the night. This tour follows a similar route to the Red tour, but deviates away from the very centre of the city in places to visit the Prater amusement area and the symbol of the city – the Wiener Riesenrad – and again in the south of the city to take in both the Arsenal and the Schloß Belvedere.

Finally back at the Opera house I went to find somewhere to grab a bite to eat. After a pleasant dinner I headed over to the Karlsplatz to take in some of the stunning buildings that are in this part of the city – most notable of all being the domed Karlskirche.

From here it was a short walk back to the hotel and, after a slightly more successful and less harassed drink in the bar, I headed to bed.

Weather

Misty Misty
AM PM
Cold (-10-0C, 14-32F)
0ºC/32ºF