Europe trip day 10: Graben, Hietzing, Neubau

We woke up lazily this morning, having a bit of a lie-in. We decided to go to the nearby Naschmarkt to get something to breakfast, and then pick up some groceries form the nearby Billa supermarket on the way home to make lunch for later in the day.

We arrived at the Naschmarkt just after 08:00 and were surprised to find that most of the stalls weren’t open yet, despite the market being advertised as open from 06:00. This was rather disappointing. The few stalls that were open were mostly either sit-down cafes, fresh fruit and vegetables, or stalls selling sweets, nuts, or baklava. So much baklava. It was like every second stall had guys pushing baklava or “free” samples of nuts or dried fruit at us. We stopped at a cafe to get some bites for breakfast: a sort of thick flaky pastry filled with nuts for my wife, and one filled with poppy seeds for me. They were pretty good.

Sweets at Naschmarkt, Vienna

We walked the length of the market and decided to head back via the supermarket. We stopped in there to buy some muesli for breakfasts for the rest of the week, with milk (real milk this time, not buttermilk), yoghurt, and we also bought some fresh fruit: bananas for me and grapes and blueberries for my wife. We also got a box of tissues since there are none in the apartment, and a small tube of toothpaste.

Back in the room we had second breakfast with the muesli. While we did this I checked out public transport tickets for Vienna. We’re half an hour’s walk from the centre of the city, and normally we’d mostly walk everywhere, but with the hot and sunny weather we don’t want to be out and exposed to the sun all day, so we decided to try getting transport to and from places. I found that they use validated paper tickets, but you can buy a 7-day pass which can be loaded into the WienMobil app on a phone for a discount. This was perfect since we’re here for a week (apart from our overnight side trip to Budapest tomorrow). So I set us up with the app and we bought the 7-day passes online.

For our first venture out we walked just a couple of minutes to Kettenbrückengasse U-bahn station and caught a U4 line train to Schwedenplatz. Here we emerged and walked roughly south-west, through streets lined with shops and cafes, zig-zagging to see various sights such as the Ankeruhr historical clock, which is mounted on a bridge between two buildings over the road beneath.

Ankeruhr, Vienna

We also visited the Peterskirche, a baroque Catholic church with an extremely intricate decorated interior. We walked along the Graben, Vienna’s busy main plaza, which we’d only really glimpsed yesterday. It was bustling with people and interesting sights everywhere. I was taking photos of statues, fountains, buildings, and all sorts of things.

Pestsäule column, Graben, Vienna

Eventually we reached the St Stephen’s Cathedral again, which we saw briefly last night. This time we went inside to have a look at the interior. It was actually a bit plain and disappointing compared to the Peterskirche. And there was a mass in progress so we couldn’t go in very far, so we only spent a couple of minutes before leaving again. We looped around west again, behind the rear of the Peterskirche, heading towards the Herrengasse U-bahn station. We’d decided to head back to our room for lunch, and to take the train again rather than walk all the way. We took the U3 line to Volkstheater and changed to the U2 line to Museumsquartier, from where it was a short walk to our apartment.

I let my wife go inside while I dashed around to the supermarket to buy some tomatoes to add to my sandwich. We had rye bread with emmenthal cheese, and I sliced a tomato to go on mine. I also ate one of the bananas I’d bought. We rested for a while in the air conditioning and my wife did some sketching. We did some online research to try to find some interesting neighbourhoods a bit out of the city centre and tourist-heavy areas. We thought we might find somewhere fun to walk around and find a nice quiet restaurant for dinner. Some searching led me to Hietzing as a likely candidate, while my wife suggested Neubau.

We decided to try Hietzing and caught a U4 bahn from Kettenbrückengasse in the other direction, past Schloss Schönbrunn, to the Hietzing station. My research suggested this was a fancy neighbourhood with perhaps boutique shopping and funky cafes and stuff, but it turned out to be rather dull and small. Google Maps indicated another commercial hub in the area around Jagdschlossgasse, so we caught a tram out there, but if anything this was even less interesting, being just a short string fo dull businesses and a handful of tired-looking restaurants. My wife checked in a bookshop for sketchbooks, but otherwise we didn’t spend much time here before catching a tram back.

We continued on the tram all the way to Westbahnhof, at the western edge of Neubau. Here we walked east along Mariahilfer Strasse, which turned out to be an amazing and lively wide mall lined with busy shops and food places. By now it was after 17:00 and we were getting hungry enough to consider dinner. I searched for somewhere nearby that might do Austrian food and have vegetarian options, and I found a place just a block away called Gasthaus Zum Wohl, which was 100% gluten- and lactose-free, with Austrian style dishes and several vegetarian and vegan options. My wife liked the sound of it, so we walked the short distance there and were given a table outside on the side street, where it was thankfully shady by now and had a mild breeze blowing to keep us a bit cooler than if we’d been inside (the waitress said there was no air conditioning).

We ordered some baked tomato risotto balls with pesto and salad for a starter, then my wife had spinach dumplings in spicy tomato sauce, while I had the Wiener schnitzel with potato salad.

Spinach dumplings in spicy tomato sauce

My wife really liked her food, while I thought the schnitzel was okay, but not as good as the one I’d had in Berlin. The gluten-free breadcrumbs probably didn’t help, unfortunately. The starter was quite big, and I worried that we would be too full for the mains, but thankfully they weren’t enormous and we managed to finish, but we had no room for dessert. At least not yet… My wife decided to buy a slice of apple strudel from an Aida outlet on the main street that we walked past, to take home and eat a bit later in the evening. That was nice, but quite different from strudels I’ve had at home. This one seemed to be baked longer, making the pastry brown and crisp, rather than paler and softer.

We continued walking the length of Mariahilfer Strasse until we reached our apartment, where we showered off the heat and sweat of the hot day, and then relaxed into the evening.

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