2013: Trip to Vienna with a Layover in Paris

When traveling after the summer season, Air France flights from Toronto to Vienna all have a stop over in either Paris or Amsterdam.  We decided to augment our trip to Vienna with a 3 night layover in Paris, which we could do without paying extra airfare.  We like traveling to Europe on Air France since we find the seats to be a bit more comfortable and the food to be better.  On the longer leg from Toronto to Paris,  we were served a fairly decent meal of beef with mushroom sauce, mashed potato, carrot raisin salad, bread with cheese, apple sauce and a piece of cake.  Even for the short two-hour connecting flight from Paris to Vienna, we received a vegetarian sandwich.  The day we flew happened to be the 80^th anniversary of Air France.  To celebrate, the flight attendants handed out free cupcakes to all the travelers waiting in at the gate.  

The “Innere Stradt” (downtown) of Vienna, Austria is very beautiful with all its palaces, gardens, Baroque buildings and sculptures.  It is extremely easy and pleasant to walk around.  Because of the one-way ring roads that surround this area on either side of the Danube Canal, the distance to walk between two points is often much shorter than it would take to drive.  This was apparent when we used Google Maps to get directions from our rental apartment on Hoeher Markt to the St. Stephens Cathedral which was merely a few blocks away.  However by car, you had to make a big loop around the ring road and so the travel time by for both walking and driving was 6 minutes.  Vienna has extra appeal since it is not yet as overrun with tourists as cities like Paris or London are. 

Using the website AirBnB.com, we found the perfect apartment in the centre of the Innere Stradt, within walking distance to restaurants, shops and most of the major attractions of Vienna.  Our area was a shopping district known as Hoeher Markt, which conveniently had a large 3-level grocery store across the street, and is also home to the famous Anker Clock.  We usually use the website vrbo.com to rent apartments, but in this case, AirBnB had the advantage of filtering accommodations by districts within the city, so we could easily isolate the area we wanted to stay in.

 As always, we find it so much more pleasant to stay in an apartment with a separate living area and kitchen, as opposed to a hotel room.  It is also more economical.  Our six night stay averaged around $167 Canadian per day and we also saved money by eating a healthy breakfast at home most days.  Compare this to the Hotel Topazz which is located just a block away, whose room rates for this same time period were over $320 Canadian.  However the Hotel Topazz is an extremely cool looking building with funky décor and rooms that have huge oval windows overlooking the street.  If we ever return to Vienna and want to splurge, it would be fun to stay here for a night or two.

 We were extremely lucky to find that right in front of our apartment was one of the recommended Würstelstands that sold many varieties of grilled sausages and hotdogs, as well as beer.  This was great for the evenings where we were exhausted from walking all day and were too tired to venture out to a restaurant.  We would pick up a salad from the supermarket, and then select several types of sausages, such as the Kasekrainer, Bratwurst or Currywurst, to bring home for dinner.  The various sausages came with different types of mustard or sauces and different types of bread or buns.

 Built in the early 1900s for the Anker Insurance Company, the Anker Clock is one of the highlights of Hoeher Markt.  The clock was designed in the Art Nouveau Secession style by Franz von Matsch in 1917.  Different figures representing important people in Viennese history, including Emperors Maximilian I, Rudolf I, Leopold VI and composer Joseph Hayden appear at the top of each hour.  Above each figure, a Roman numeral depicts the hour.  At noon, all twelve figures pass through the clock in pageantry style accompanied by music, before the representative for the XII hour finally comes to rest.  This fanfare attracts a large crowd of spectators each day.