A weekend trip to Vienna
Transport - How to get around?
First off all, most of the "must see" attractions in Vienna are in walking distance from each other in the city center. So I do recommend staying in walking distance from the city center or close to a metro station. We stayed behind the Volksgarten which was a nice starting point. The most important places outside the city is easily accessible by metro, so I recommend that to both save time and money. You can easily buy tickets at every metro station or tobacco shop. The times we took taxi it usually ended up taking us longer to get around and it is worth knowing that they only take cash! So if you know you are going to take a taxi during your trip, have some Euros with you, otherwise they wont take you.
Day 1
I recommend starting by exploring the city on foot. Vienna is an incredibly beautiful city, so most likely you will be overwhelmed by all the beautiful buildings and architecture and see much more of it than in a taxi or hop-on-hop-of bus. We started by walking towards the city and on our way stopped to marvel at the Rathausplatz, its adjacent park, the Parliament Building and the Pallas Athene Fountain.
Further we walked towards the Natural History Museum and Maria-Therezien Platz. For those interested in art it is well worth to visit the museum, and for those who are not, the outside of the museum and the surrounding gardens still makes it worth a visit in itself.
Not far from there you can find Hofburg Castle and the Spanish Riding School. In this area there are also a myriad of statues, beautiful buildings and amazing parks worthy of some time. After taking in all the history and marveling at all the buildings we decided to have lunch at the famous Brasserie Palmenhaus. Personally I was not a big fan of the food, but you can either sit inside the greenhouse for food and drinks or outside overlooking the park. It really is a nice spot for a little break from walking the city. It gets rather busy so I recommend reserving a table if you know you want to go here.
After resting our feet for some time we headed further into the city center to see some more attractions and also do some shopping. More precisely we walked toward the Stefansdom and St. Peters Catholic Church. If you get there before five o'clock you can walk the steps up to the top of the tower. Unfortunately we were to late this time, but will definitely do it next time. It wasn't super easy to find, but at the corner in the back you will find a small opening with information. They are both located smack dab in the center so you can either walk around and marvel at everything because there really is something pretty around every corner. Or you can check out the shopping in the area. We did a mix which was great because at the end of the day we needed to get some new shoes. So if you are following this path I highly recommend doing it in some really comfortable walking shoes.
At the end of the day we kind of stumbled upon a really nice restaurant we wanted to try. We hadn't made any reservations, but luckily enough they had just enough room for us. This restaurant was called Labstelle, and if you ever visit Vienna I would highly recommend going here! We all agreed it was probably some of the best food we had ever had, and in addition it was reasonably priced. We also got to taste bubbly orange wine, which is something new to me, but for sure will take with me home to Norway.
Day 2
We started the day just enjoying a long and relaxing breakfast with mimosas, it is a vacation after all. After that we headed towards the metro station to get to Schonbrunn Palace. From the city it takes approximately 30 minutes with the metro and you have to switch metro one time, but I promise it is very easy to navigate. Once we got there we had to buy a ticket to see the inside of the palace. Here you can choose between the Imperial tour which only takes you to parts of the palace, or the Grand tour which is what we did and I would recommend others to do. To see the gardens and surrounding area is free, so if you don't want to go inside you can spend hours in the massive gardens for free. When you buy a ticket you get assigned a time slot to enter the palace to make sure not to many people enter at the same time. This truly makes the experience much better. How long you have to wait depends on the day, but in our case we waited one hour and 15 minutes. In that time you can start wandering the gardens and realize how massive the place really is. Once we entered the palace we got headphones (don't skip these, they were really helpful) and walked around the palace exploring. The tour took us about an hour, and afterwards we walked some more in the gardens before heading back to the metro. Even though we just spent a couple of hours here, I am sure you could spend a whole day without getting bored. Next we took the metro towards Belvedere Palace. Another place easily accessible by metro from the city center. You could probably spend a whole day exploring the palace, museum and surrounding parks here as well.
When the evening came we enjoyed some traditional Austrian food at Fromme Helene before a classical concert. It was definitely a touristy thing, but we enjoyed an evening with a very talented quartet, opera singer and ballet dancers. There are definitely a lot of opportunities to experience the classics in Vienna, and I would not miss it if I went back again.
This is what I would choose to prioritize for a weekend in Vienna, and you can probably spread this itinerary over more days too. However, Vienna has so many wonderful sights that you can probably fill a week with wonderful things to do!