This year took an unexpected turn for our travel plans. We were supposed to visit Turkey during the summer for about a week. We researched the cities, looked for flights, asked about recommendations in different travel forums on Facebook, and then we found out Ramadan will be happening on our planned dates. The dates were set so we couldn’t change them.
We read about how Ramadan would impact our travel and things didn’t look very promising so a couple of weeks before our big trip we started looking for a backup plan: what other city to visit that we could afford. Beirut was a definite travel plan since I had family to visit there. In our search we came across Vienna, and we said why not? We haven’t been! It looks affordable and a cool city to visit so we booked our flights and Airbnb.
We had a wonderful time in Vienna. People are very welcoming and extremely nice! (I had an injured foot so I kept walking around with a cane and the elderly would try to give me their seats!! It was so sweet)
As girls from Miami we were a little defensive from anything that looked too good to be true, when we were approached by two men selling tickets for a concert and ballet show. It was simply 25 euros since we were students and we were offered a ticket free so we took the deal, and it was an actual event, look at that! hahaha We were glad we did.
Some of the other places we visited that are very worth it were the Belvedere Palace, which looks more like a palace Versailles style than the actual Schonbrunn Palace, which you should also visit. If you are into museums then the MuseumsQuartier is a nice place to spend your day. There are nice places to eat and relax between each museum visit. Also, important note if you are a student (or not) make sure you always take your student card with you to get that student price especially if you are traveling on a budget.
The Naschmarkt took us a while to find it but we did. It’s a nice place to eat a local dish, like a Wiener schitzel, grab a beer and walk around between the little shops. The Opera House is incredible, I think even more than the one in Paris. We went at night and we got to see a live streaming of the show that was playing that night. Apparently, its custom to live stream the plays because there was a huge crowd around the screen, people came prepare with their chairs or blankets.
Overall, we had an incredible time walking around Vienna.
Also, if you have an extra day in Vienna take advantage of a quick day trip to Bratislava through the Danube River and back by bus. We had the chance to explore Bratislava for a day and it was worthwhile.
