Second stop on our grand eurotour holiday 2025, and it's Vienna, Austria. Odd sort of place for a Summer holiday, but it's central to all the other places, well connected, and there's one particular feature the family were interested in here.
We left Budapest-Keleti at 13:40 and from my picture of the screen on the train I can see we would travel through Budapest Kelenföld, Tatabánya, Győr, Mosonmagyaróvár, Hegyeshalom, and to Wien Hbf at 16:17. That's Austrian / German for Vienna train station. I hope I got all those accented characters right, unlikely.
It was not a smooth journey though really. We were on the train early and got good seats together. Some reserved, fair enough, some not, so we sat where we could. Before we'd even set off we got moved by someone who'd reserved the seats since we sat down. You can do this on this line. I couldn't figure out how so we just found more seats, but then got moved again. Third seats lucky, we didn't all get moved again, but we were in constant fear of being shunted which made it not super relaxing.
Not a long walk to our hotel. I let the others settle in and went out for a walk to find somewhere for dinner. Right nearby I saw a place that looked quite good, and the name was familiar... It was Zweitbester, and lo and behold it was the same place I had been on my previous visit, back in 2022. A coincidence that we were near it now, as I don't think it was near where I stayed last time. We didn't go in here in the end, I found The Vienna Naschmarkt:
Vienna’s best-known market has around 120 market stands and restaurants for a colorful culinary offering ranging from Viennese to Indian, from Vietnamese to Italian. The Naschmarkt has developed into a meeting point for young and old. The Flea Market on Saturday is already a cult event.
It looked like a christmas market really, but in a long strip, and I thought we're sure to find somewhere to eat. We did, we had traditional Viennese cuisine somewhere along here and it was pleasant. Austrian food is not so big on the vegan experience but I had a cabbage pasta dish that was interesting and traditional apparently. The others had schnitzel sort of thing but avoiding the veal.
The hotel was good, a Holiday Inn mini suite really, plenty of room for us, though in a small hotel. Breakfast was good, even had sparkling wine / bucks fizz. It was a bonus to find this was included, we thought we must surely have opted for a cheapo no breakfast offer.
Next day the highlight of Vienna for the others, the zoo! I'm not a big zoo fan, but this was supposed to be good, and it was. It has all the big names. Our first encounter was with a koala, then hippo, penguins, and a POLAR BEAR! Penguins and a polar bear in this thirty degree heatwave?? Also, I'm sure it said a polar bear could jump quite a distance, more than the height of the wall round his enclosure. It was only the heat stopping him eating us alive I think. It was nice to see, but also super sad, I'd rather not have seen him and known he had not been dragged half way across the world to be gawked at. There were elephants, tigers, lions, and giraffes, who could better cope with this weather, but still they didn't look ecstatic to be there.
More zoo later including the highlight...
We came back through the Naschmarkt later to a place that was extremely unpleasant, a so called Italian wine bar that was dreadful. Vienna tourist board you need to stamp down hard on places providing a bad experience for tourists.
Sunny intervals and a fresh breeze, 13 - 21℃.
⬅️ Got Suede tickets :: Health stats 28/8/25 ➡️
Paulʼs weblog - I live in A sleepy town, Kent. Wed + father to 2, I am a full stack web developr, + I do js / node, some ruby, other languages etc. My hobbies are pubbing, running, restaurants, home automation 🤖 and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and time travel.
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