Places/Austria

Vienna

Vienna

An imperial capital that is better in a coffee house than in a loop of palaces.

Vienna still looks like the capital of an empire because the buildings were not asked to stop. The useful city is smaller than that impression: a ring road, neighbourhoods of apartment blocks, and rooms where people sit for a long time over one cup.

You can tour palaces until you dislike gilt. One is enough. Schönbrunn or the Hofburg, not both, unless palaces are the hobby.

See

• One palace, timed

  Schönbrunn if you want the gardens afterwards. The Hofburg if you are already in the centre and would like to walk there.

• A coffee house you were not assigned

  Not only the famous rooms with assigned history. A neighbourhood café, a newspaper, an hour in which you do not move.

• The Naschmarkt in the morning

  Fruit, bread, and the end of the market before it becomes a stall of hot food for visitors. Walk the linke Wienzeile afterwards.

• A tram around the Ring, once

  Sit down, look up, get off when a neighbourhood looks more interesting than the narration in your head.