Vienna vacations can be as long or as short as you want them to be.

There are great buildings, wide avenues, music and culture and a great cafe society.

We decided on a brief visit because we were in Prague on a short break and we thought we might as well have a day in the city of Vienna. This is not, I suspect, the first thought in most people’s minds when they visit Prague but we thought it was doable. So we did it.

We arrived around lunchtime and there was a Metro station just around the corner from where the coach dropped us. It was very easy to buy a ticket and find the right train to take us to the centre of the city. We chose the stop near the Opera House, as this is the bus stop to catch all three of the hop on hop off buses. Because we only had six hours this was the best way to see as much of Vienna as possible, quickly and then get off to see some things in more detail.

Our first route was to see the Schonenberg Palace. We debated whether to go into the palace but decided it would take up too much time. As with all hop on hop off buses we had a commentary via our headphones and a brief Vienna travel guide . I do think this hop on hop off idea is an excellent way to get a flavour and taste of any city.

Many of the buildings were magnificent and the broad streets and avenues made it easy to imagine how the city would have looked without all the modern day traffic. I don’t know much about the ruling families of Austria except many of them were Hapsburgs and the most famous female member of the family must be Marie Antionette, and of the male members Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose assassination in Sarajevo sparked off the first world war, would be the most famous.

Between buses we wandered around the Opera House area and even toyed with the idea of having coffee and sacha torte at the Hotel Sacha. However there were long queues and the service was leisurely so we gave it miss.

The next tour was the immediate city centre, which gave us the opportunity to see the main buildings, which were mostly State and cultural but again it gave us a good flavour of the city. As we neared the end of this tour we were in an old part of the city where the streets were so narrow that the bus could only just get by.

This is where Mozart had lived for a few years and he composed The Barber of Seville while living there. We got off the bus here and enjoyed a short time exploring the narrow streets, alleyways and squares.

Eventually the heat got too much and we spied a very busy ice cream parlour where we bought our favorit flavors. We ate it sitting on the steps of a statue to Guttenberg, this seemed to be a popular place to sit.

All to soon it was time to catch the Metro back to our bus pick up point.

I don’t even pretend to have seen the true Vienna with such a brief visit but bargain city breaks give you an over all flavour of a city and give you an idea of whether or not you would like to spend longer there.

I am glad we had our day in Vienna but I haven’t made my mind up yet about going back.

Tags: bargain city breaks, city short breaks, vienna travel guide, vienna vacations