Day 2 Austria : Vienna

Day 2 of our stay in Vienna, today the plan is to go eat good food ( Cafe Central , Figlmuller ) , visit The Hofburg , St. Stephen's Cathedral and also see the Street performances near Karlsplatz park area which is holding the Vienna Busker Festival 2019.
Breakfast was not provided by the hotel so we just grab some sandwich/bread from the train station. First we visited St. Stephen's Cathedral, to get inside you need to pay a fee (think is 6 Euro ?) also there are different paid section like the Catacombs , North Tower , South Tower, etc.

Next we visited The Hofburg which is just walking distance away from the cathedral and along the way there are many beautiful building , statues.

The Hofburg

Playing games in front of The Hofburg while waiting

Next we visited Cafe Central as not only Vienna is famous for their coffee , they also have very strong cafe culture as you can see famous Austria writer Peter Altenberg statue , formerly known as Richard Engländer at the door side. His famous quote, ” If I am not in a cafe, I am on the way to the cafe”. The queue seems long but it moves quite fast when we were there. It turns out that it actually quite big inside and also seats available but think the staffs couldn't serve in time that is why queue is formed outside.We were seated at the left wing of the cafe, a quite quiet area rather then the nicely lit main part of the cafe, we were later told that this was the original part of the cafe before it was expanded. I highly recommend to have the cakes here as it turns out quite nice ( used to think that cakes/dessert/pastres in Europe usually looks nice but don't taste as good as it look.                                 After Cafe Central ,we went back to St. Stephen's Cathedral to visit the interior ( cos they were having mass in the morning ) then follow with a late lunch at Figlmuller as they are famous for their Schnitzel. They had 2 outlets , the first one we went was very full and they advise us to visit the other outlet which was just few minutes away.Was there around 3pm+ and there was about 10 pax in the Q.

Long Q @ about 3pm+

Size of the Schnitzel

chive sauce, apple horseradish and brown potatoes

Beer!

We ordered their famous Figlmüller-Schnitzel , Potato-field salad with pumpkin seed oil, Viennese boiled beef in the pot (served with chive sauce, apple horseradish and brown potatoes) and of cos BEER ! Price are not that cheap but the portion was quite big for the Schnitzel ( we ordered one to share ), The salad and soup was very good too. ( forgot to take picture of the soup and salad )

Below are some pictures of the street performances , they have different groups/performances at different allocated timing during the day

Some items bought from supermarket and misc photos taken in Vienna

Day 1 Austria : Vienna

We reached Vienna in the morning around 7:30 AM , then we took a train to the main station as we are stying at ibis Wien Hauptbahnhof which is just across the road. We will be staying 2 nights and will be making out way to Hallstatt on the 3rd morning. On the weekends we are visiting just happened to be the Vienna Buskers Festival, it's an international street art festival which usually hold early September each year.
We left our luggages at the hotel ( cos they charged for early check in ) and we made our way to Naschmarkt for breakfast. From the main station , walk to take U1 to Karlsplatz and walk about 5 min, or transfer to U4 and take to Kettenbrückengasse and walk 1 min ( the market is actually between 2 stations , the market/resturants are nearer to Karlsplatz station, where the flex market that opens every saturday is nearer toKettenbrückengasse station. Do note most of the shops are closed on Sundays.
When we reach there , it started to rain and after walking around we decided to eat at one of the sausage store and surprising it was GOOD !!!!!!! The rain got heavier when we left and we were drenched as we did not bring umbrellas with us.
Next we made out way to Schönbrunn Palace which is just few stations away from Kettenbrückengasse on U4. As I am not really into history and museum, so I decided to check out their apple strudel show while my fren check out the Palace. For the Apple Strudel show , it cost 6 Euro for a piece of apple strudel and 11.50 Euro for a coffer + apple strudel.

Was raining heavily on and off so did not explore the garden

Next we took the train and went to Salm Brau for lunch, saw this restaurant being introduce in some chinese travel program ( youtube : XFun吃货俱乐部 ).
We ordered a set for 2 with pork knuckle + pork ribs + 2 beers and we added a beer sampling. Can't remember the price but I remember its not that expensive, quite value for money. Just that we were sitting outside and it's bit chilly so the food turn cold quite fast and thus the skin on the knuckle is a bit chewy.
After lunch, we proceed back to our hotel for check in and take a rest as we had a Mozart concert booked for the night at the golden hall (there is no show on sunday).

Made a mistake and went to the State Opera instead of the Golden hall

We booking from here and it comes with a free CD each and it allows to select seats , if you got Vienna pass think you can get 15% off, there are a few other site that does the booking as well.
Be prepared that there are a lot of tourists and tour group attending this concert and it can get very irritating when some of them keep talking throughout the concert. It was my first Opera concert and I throughly enjoyed it.

Supper Time

Fyi , we did not get the Vienna pass as we find that unless you gonna take the hop on hop off bus if not it's not really worth it. For train travelling , we just bought the day ticket which cost 5.80 Euro. This is valid till 1am and also valid on all public transport services in Vienna.

Two weeks Austria + Switzerland Train Trip Sept 2019 Planning

This is quite a throwback as had not been very hardworking in update thing travel blog. Decided to do this now during the Circuit Breaker period due to Covid-19 as there is nothing much to do other then Eat , Sleep , Gaming + looking at past holiday photos.

Had always been wanting to go to the Swiss Alps to take a look , this is one of the bucket list, Last time i saw a TV show and they were showing how they take the train from the foot of the mountain to Top of Europe , the green below and the white on top , it's like visiting 2 seasons in a trip again. Decided to combine Austria together cos we thought that since Switzerland is expensive then maybe combine with a less expensive country to visit ( but we were wrong , Austria was not not really cheap too)

This was the itinerary for the trip , basically we try to spend one week in each country. The original plan was to fly in Vienna and out Zurich , but the airfares was a bit higher then so we decided to in & out both from Vienna airport with an overnight train from Zurich to Vienna.

Had already tried to plan a more slow pace travel but still ends up quite rush , esp when in Switzerland.This is a very train based holiday as Switzerland are famous for their train transport like Japan.

Some important site which i used with tons of information for helping me with my planning in this 2 countries ( Other then google map , tripadvisor, etc.)
Austria Train Site : https://www.oebb.at/en/
Switzerland Train Site : https://www.sbb.ch/en/home.html
SBB Daysaver Pass : https://www.sbb.ch/en/travelcards-and-tickets/tickets-for-switzerland/1-day-travelpass/saver-day-pass.html
Swiss Travel forum : https://www.myswissalps.com
Train travel information : https://www.seat61.com
Glacier Express Train : https://www.glacierexpress.ch/en/
Bernina Express Train : https://www.rhb.ch/en/panoramic-trains/bernina-express

As most of our travel are by trains , it helps to plan in advance and buy early bird tickets, most of our tickets are bought 3-6 mths in advance , those major train travel we will stick to the planned itinerary.Eg, For Vienna to Hallstatt, we bought at 29 Euro each , it could have cost us double if we buy it last minute. Also not only we got the Half Card , we also got Day Saver Pass for Switzerland ( available 60 days in advance ) It only cost 29 CHF ( to 49CHF so have to wake up every morning to snatch the tickets ) and it allows you to take any SBB train ( 2nd class for whole day ) , It also can be use for scenic trains like Bernina Express , Glacier Express. Eg. a 2nd class ticker for Glacier Express ( excluding the seat reservation of 33CHF ) will cost 150 CHF , but instead we had it for only 29 CHF ( but we took the first class at 49 CHF instead of 268 CHF ) So it's important to plan out itinerary and keep to it in advance also do compare all fare charges like early bird , actual fares and those special rail passes.

When you are traveling inter-country by train , you need to check the price on both train site in the two countries , cos we had an overnight train from Zurich back to Vienna and i found out that buying the tickets from Austria side using Euro was much cheaper then buying on the Switzerland train site which is in CHF and cost about 30 more)