Hapsburg-Renaissance Trip - Vienna Day One

We've always found that it is good idea once you've landed in Europe to get out and about as soon as possible. So after about an hour nap, we walked down a main drag to the center of town just to get our bearings. We're staying in an area that is outside of the main tourist district, District Two Leopoldstadt. 

I'm using Apple Maps this time as I've had issues with Google Maps in the past. However, I'm thinking a lot of problems have been phone related. My prior phone and iPhone 5s was a dog. I had lots of issues connecting to WiFi from the first day. My new iPhone 6 has been working much better and I've not had much problem with using the maps at all. Plus the battery life seems much better.

I leaned into the TripAdvisor App restaurant locator and found two places that were highly recommended a Croatian fish restaurant and a very typical Austrian. We went to one last night and one for lunch today.

Statues, statues everywhere

This little quiet side street is just 200 meters from tourist central where there's a Starbucks and a Hard Rock Cafe.

Meal One

Fishrestaurant Kaj

A little Croatian wine

We shared a nice fish soup

Very light fresh fish tasting broth, all the seafood in it was tasty

A whole grilled branzino 

That would have been much more picturesque if I'd taken a picture of it before I started serving it!

A traditional Croatian dessert which was cheese filled crepes

They were basically blintzes!

The soup was excellent but the fish itself was the best we've had even accounting for all the good fish we had in Istanbul and Malta. The price for this meal was about $90. For a value comparison just last week in Chicago I was a McCormick and Schmick, a good, upper quality, sea food chain. My friend and I split six oysters, he had some salmon and I had a scallop dish and we paid $120 with no wine and it wasn't anywhere near as good.

The next morning it was up an at um.  A nice typically European hotel breakfast buffet.

This bread had so much 'stuff' - seeds, grains, etc. even daughter # 3 would like it.

Then we went into the town center. We're using the U-Bahn and the Trams. They work on an honor system. You by a ticket - we got a two day unlimited ticket - and you never show it or going through a turnstile...unless one of the occasional security checks happen. If that happens and you don't have a validated ticket, you pay a big fine.

Some sights from the main part of town.

Stephensplatz 

(The main center of the city)

The area of the Hofburg Palace

The State Opera House

(The Hapsburgs were all about music - think Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Gluck, et al.

Meal Two

A typical Austrian cuisine place

Wife and I shared a Wiener Schnitzel accompanied by a potato salad that was in some kind of very mild sweet sour dressing, and a braised beef dish that had a pile of deep fried onions on it with roasted potatoes and a sweet/sour gherkin.  

We both remarked on the braised beef dish that even though it was a heavy dish that the flavor never got heavy on the palate. This is the type of quality we consistently find in Europe when we travel.  But I give kudos to the accuracy of the TripAdvisor commentators that we depend on to find these places.  By the way this meal with the beer and Coke Light was about $52.  It was our big meal of the day.

We went back to the hotel and had a good nap and rest because we had a four hour photo-sightseeing tour coming up in the afternoon.