Vienna first. Then the lakes.
Schönbrunn before the coach parties, Vivaldi under a baroque dome, the slow boat through the Wachau. Each one is priced, rated and pinned to a day of your trip.
The seven Austria gets right.
A palace with a queue that actually moves, an orchestra in a church built for the sound, white stallions at morning practice, and one wheel over the Prater that has been turning since 1897.
Vienna: Skip-the-cashier-desk-line Giant Ferris Wheel Ride
Ride the Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel in Wiener Prater for big views from almost 65 meters, plus a quick panorama museum and skip-the-line entry.
From $17 per person
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Hallstatt is a long day, and worth it.
Coaches leave Vienna before eight; the village appears around eleven, salt-white houses stacked over green water with a mountain behind them. Add the Skywalk platform, the salt mine or an hour on the lake and you are back in the city for a late dinner. From Salzburg it is half the drive and half the day.
Which Vienna concert night?
Vienna sells more concert seats than any city in Europe, and the price you pay decides which room you sit in. Three kinds of evening, three very different prices, all of them real musicians.
Stone and candlelight
The church concert
1h 15m · from $40 · 14,951 reviews
Karlskirche, St Peter’s, the cathedral: baroque interiors where the room does half the work. Vivaldi and Mozart programmes, an hour to ninety minutes, seating usually unreserved unless you pay for the front block. Pick this one when the room is half the reason for the ticket.
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Full orchestra
The concert-hall night
from $78 · 3,986 reviews
The Musikverein’s Golden Hall and the Konzerthaus, with an interval, a cloakroom and a dress code nobody enforces but everybody follows. Longer programmes, higher prices, and the acoustic Vienna is actually famous for. Anything in the Golden Hall wants booking weeks out.
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Period costume
The Mozart evening
2,423 reviews
Small ensembles in period costume, in the rooms Mozart lived in and the palaces he played. Shorter, warmer, far easier with children, and usually still available the same week. Several come with dinner attached, which is the version most people end up wanting.
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Vienna does not close at ten.
The Danube goes copper around nine and the evening boats push off from Schwedenplatz with dinner already on the table. Under the Old Town there are cellars older than the streets above them, and a guide is the only sensible way in. The last Fiaker still works the Hofburg courtyards long after the museums lock up.
Cake counts as a meal here.
Kaffeehaus rules are real. One coffee buys the table for the afternoon, the glass of water keeps arriving, and nobody comes to move you along. These three start at the pastry counter and work outward from there.
The lifts run all summer.
Innsbruck is the only capital where the cable car starts two tram stops from the cathedral and finishes at 2,300 metres. Above it: the Stubai ridge, the launch sites the tandem pilots use, and glacier air by late morning. No skis, no snow to wait for.
The Danube still runs on abbeys and wine.
Between Melk and Krems the river bends past terraced vineyards, a ruined castle where Richard the Lionheart was held, and a Benedictine library with forty thousand books in it. Boats, bikes and small coaches all cover the same forty kilometres. The only real difference is how long you get in Dürnstein.
Seven places worth the train fare.
Schönbrunn for the state rooms. Hallstatt for the lake. The Wachau for the wine terraces. Innsbruck for the mountain that starts at the tram stop. Salzburg for the fortress and everything Mozart touched.
Twelve kinds of day.
Concerts and palaces, boats and strudel classes, and the cable car that leaves from the middle of Innsbruck. Choose the kind of day you want; the list behind the tile does the rest.
Six mornings that leave Vienna behind.
The railway and the coach network turn most of the country into a day trip. Hallstatt, the Wachau, Salzburg and the fortress above it are all back by dinner, and the seat home is part of the ticket.
Three days, Vienna first.
Three days will not cover the country. They will cover the part everybody comes for, in the order that stops you crossing the city twice. This is the sequence to use if you land at Schwechat on a Friday.
Day 1
The Ring and the old streets
Stephansdom at opening, the Hofburg courtyards, Michaelerplatz, a Fiaker if the queue is short. Finish in a Kaffeehaus and do not order the coffee to go.
Plan day one →
Day 2
Schönbrunn, then a concert
The state rooms at opening time, the Gloriette and the parterre after, back into the centre for the evening programme. Book the concert before you book the flight.
Plan day two →
Day 3
Out to Hallstatt
Hallstatt if you want the postcard, the Wachau if you want the wine. Both leave early, both come back late, and both need a booked seat between June and September.
Plan day three →
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