For our summer European vacation, we spent two weeks in Austria and Germany at the end of August. Our trip started in Vienna, where I attended a conference in the mornings for four days and explored the city in the afternoons.
We flew on an overnight flight via Air Canada, landing in Vienna in the early morning. The European EES system was recently implemented which apparently resulted in lots of airport travel chaos over the summer, but we were luckily redirected into a family line and got through customs within about 20 minutes. We prebooked a hotel transfer with Vienna Airport Cab and had a driver pick us up promptly for early check-in at Wilde Aparthotel Fleischmarkt. We had stayed at a Wilde aparthotel in Edinburgh and the location in Vienna was great as well. My only qualm was no housekeeping for stays under a week and they never came in to empty our garbage bins despite repeated requests. Otherwise, we really liked the location of the hotel as it was right in the old city and easily walkable to many tourist sites.
Vienna is known for its numerous museums, including several that are family and toddler friendly. Our first excursion was to the Haus Der Musik, located in the building where the Vienna Philharmonic was founded. It features interactive exhibits including an entire floor dedicated to the work of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss II, and Mahler.
Next, we took the Metro to Schönbrunn Palace to visit the gardens and zoo. The Schönbrunn Zoo is a UNESCO World Heritage site, established in 1752 and remains as the world’s oldest zoo still in operation. I’m not sure that it is the best zoo in terms of conservation work, but it is definitely large and houses about 500 species. We spent Teddy’s birthday here and he had fun running around and seeing the animals.
Our final museum visit was the Natural History Museum Vienna, which I think was Teddy’s favourite given his current dinosaur obsession.
What about the food in Vienna? Well, we ate a lot of schnitzel. Our favourite was at Meissl & Schadn where we also tried their Salzburger nockerln which is a cloud-like soufflé dessert.
Another highlight was the classic Austrian dessert called kaiserschmarrn, made of shredded pancakes topped with plum stew and apple sauce.
After our short city break in Vienna, it was time to move on to our next stop — Salzburg. More on that coming up!
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