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I confess, Vienna wasn’t on my original travel itinerary. (Actually, nothing was beyond Innsbruck, Munich and Liechtenstein!) But after adding on time in Seefeld and Salzburg with the help of Tourism Austria, I had two days to kill in between events in Salzburg — and I couldn’t bear to spend so much time in Austria without visiting its capital!
So I took a whirlwind trip to Vienna — and spent those two days just walking around the city and exploring.
It turns out that walking around the city was one of the best things I could do — because Vienna is drenched in incredible architecture.
My first impression of Vienna was that it reminded me of a combination of New York and Paris. New York, surely, for the modern shopping areas that seemed to sneak into every neighborhood of the city.
But Vienna reminded me so much of Paris. Not for its glamour — I find Paris’s glamour inimitable — but for the jaw-dropping buildings that seem to dot the streets, springing up from everywhere. Vienna was a great way to see incredible buildings without booking flights to Paris.
Buildings like these.
Other buildings reminded me of specific sights within Paris. The building below, in Museumsplatz, seemed to evoke Paris’s Musee d’Orsay, a former train station:
But for me, the biggest treat was seeing Vienna’s buildings at night.
I just loved how everything was lit beautifully.
The University of Vienna, seen just before the sky went from royal blue to black, was one of my favorites:
Before coming to Vienna, I had no idea that it was such a great architecture city! If you’re a fan of architecture in the slightest, Vienna needs to be on your list of great cities in Europe. As many great cities as there are, I’d even put Vienna in the top three with Paris and Rome.
Go to Vienna; take pictures. You won’t regret it.
