#2976 vacation memories: day 6 - Vienna, Austria (10 Sept 2025)

 

a rainy day in Vienna is still a really good day

When I first started thinking about this year's vacation, one thought I had was to see the Big 3 Capitals of Central Europe: Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. I'm not exactly sure why I wanted to see this cities so much, but I really did! When Lizzie and I spoke to our travel advisor, Candice, she recommended the river cruise on the Danube. (Of course Prague is not on the Danube, but we got there anyway. I'll talk about it in a future post.)

Because Vienna was one of my Big 3, I was really excited to visit the city. I was eager to just walk around and soak up the vibes, and I had another dream that I wanted to make come true: to have coffee and apple strudel in a beautiful Viennese coffeehouse. 

If you don't know, the coffeehouse culture in Vienna is a tradition dating back to the 1600s. There are cafes, and then there are the coffeehouses that are beautifully decorated with marble table tops, velvet seats, and elegant chandeliers. That's the type of place I wanted to go. I told Lizzie my dream, and she declared that we would make it happen!

Each of the cities we visited on this cruise had easy, walkable access to the historic districts, except Vienna. We were on a "panoramic tour" which meant that we were on a big bus with lots of other Viking guests. Our guide was born and raised in Vienna, and she had a take-charge demeanor and a no-nonsense way about her that I really liked. As in other cities, she did not shy away from the World War II and Communist history of the city. She also went even further back in history to Maria Theresa, the ruler of the Hapsburg monarchy and the only woman to hold that title in her own right, and Empress Elisabeth of Austria, also known as Sisi. You cannot get away from hearing about these two fascinating women in Central Europe. 

On the bus, we passed by many green spaces, which I loved, and the guide pointed out various statues of Mozart, Strauss, and other people of historical importance. She pointed out the Klimt museum and others. Off the bus, we walked around with our group and saw many beautiful buildings, including the Hofburg Palace and St. Stephen's Cathedral. The city is dazzling in it's grandeur. The buildings enormous and wonderful. These are buildings meant for the government of an empire, not a country smaller in size than the state of Maine. 

After the tour, our guide kindly looked at the list of places Lizzie had prepared and offered her opinions on what we must see and what we could save for another time. Based on this information, Lizzie took a few minutes to build a walking map on her phone (she's amazing!) and off we went. We wandered around, stopping in bookshops and churches, and admiring the glorious flower shops. I took photos of a few of them.

I'm going to tell you right now that I don't think any country does window boxes better than Austria. You will hear me say this again when I talk about Salzburg in a future post.

After an hour or so of wandering on our own, we were feeling hungry so we decided to get serious about finding a coffeehouse. We saw a few, but none were grand with chandeliers, so we just kept walking until suddenly, we found ourselves in front of Demel. This coffeehouse showed up on nearly all the lists I saw as one of the premier old school coffeehouses. There was no queue - I think there was only one couple ahead of us to be seated, so in we went. 

Demel was exactly what I had in mind for my coffeehouse experience. We were seated in a room painted Tiffany blue with sketches in white of cakes and coffees painted on the walls. A large chandelier hung in the center of room. There was a red velvet settee at the table next to ours, and our little table had a marble top and a little floor lamp nearby. 

I was excited to be in Demel!

I ordered a cappuccino and apfelstrudel.  Lizzie ordered a cappuccino and Sacher torte. 

Lizzie with our coffee and pastries at Demel

(I took this photo from a strange angle, so my strudel and coffee look enormous.)

apfelstrudel and creme anglais

Well, the strudel was kind of enormous, really. I think there might have been at least two whole apples in that slice. The creme anglais is a light custard sauce that you spoon over the strudel. Oh man...so good!

dreams can come true!

After our coffee and cake, we walked around the shop downstairs. The coffeehouse part of the building is upstairs, and the downstairs has a take-away cafe, some outdoor seating, and a retail shop. Demel makes chocolates and all sorts of lovely things. You can even buy a Sachertorte to go (we didn't), but I did like this display:

yes, that is a goat with a Sachertorte

Our food tasting at Demel was not over. Lizzie had read about a dessert called kaiserschmarrn, which are fluffy, shredded pancakes topped with a fruit syrup and powdered sugar. We opted out of the fruit syrup and just had the sugar. We bought ours from the take-out window at Demel, and it was hot and fresh, and amazingly good. It was quite egg-y, and the pancake was really fluffy and flavorful, sweet but not American pancake sweet. We sat on a bench across from the Hofburg Palace and got right after the kaiserschmarrn. It is a fun word to say. Go ahead. Say it out loud. And if you are ever in Vienna, go get some.

We walked around some more, and we were just not ready to go back to the ship because...Vienna. It's marvelous. We decided to try to find another grand coffeehouse we'd read about, and Lizzie lead us, after a slight detour, to Cafe Schwarzenburg, the oldest coffeehouse on the Ringstrasse. This time we sat outside and had our favorite snack: beer and French fries with mayonnaise. 

cheers to Vienna!

By the time we finished our snack, it was starting to rain a bit heavier. There had been light showers off and on through the day, but the rain became pretty steady, so we decided to finish up our time in the city and head back to the ship. I mention this because we stopped at a souvenir shop and we had to leave our umbrellas in a bucket by the door. This is where my umbrella suffered an injury that would eventually lead to it's demise. You'll hear more about my broken umbrella in the Amsterdam post. 

Lizzie and I successfully negotiated the return to the ship via the metro from Stephansplatz to the Vorgartenstrasse. It's just four stops between the two stations. It would have been far to walk, and like I said, it was raining pretty hard by then.  

My favorite part of the day was having strudel and coffee at Demel. 

If I had a regret, it's that we didn't have enough time in the city. I can think of at least three things I would do if I was to go back to Vienna. However, I feel very pleased with all the places I saw and the things we did, and I think we did the best we could in the time we had. You always have to leave something for next time!

My step count on this day was 17,109, a distance of 7.1 miles. 

The next stop is Krems, Austria where we will spend time at Gottweig Abbey and then have a very pleasant afternoon sailing on the Danube through the Wachau Valley and chatting with some new friends.

See you next time!