A trip to Central Asia was part of our plan for 2020. The itinerary included Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It was a 15-16 day plan (like our usual summer breaks) with a lot of travel to remote and local places. Little did we know that our lives would change completely before we actually ended up making the trip.
For starters, the world shut down for almost 2 years due to the pandemic. While we could never have guessed that it would take so long for the world to return to normalcy, we did figure out that travel would be impacted for atleast 6-7 months. So, we squeezed in a tiny vacation to Seychelles and got back just 8 days before India announced its lockdown. The more important change was that we had a new travel companion – our baby P! He would turn two in July 2023. This would be his second international trip (we had visited Turkey when he was 1 year and 4 months old).
One of the top reasons we travel is to eat! Yes, you heard that right! Food is an expression of the culture of the place. When you eat a dish at its place of origin in its original form, it is usually delicious and worth travelling all the way there! While Austria may not be a foodie’s destination, there are some really good gems there if you find the right places. Here is our Austria Food Guide to get you started!
In our experience of travelling, Austria was one of the easiest to plan transits between cities. Everything was online and even while we were there, it was easy to find our way thanks to the readily available maps. We entered Austria from Prague by train and started our trip at Salzburg.
Travel in Austria – Buses
Austria has a really good network of buses. For our travel from Salzburg to St. Gilgen and beyond, we took the local Postbus service. For long distance travel, you can check Flixbus (https://global.flixbus.com/) and GetbyBus (https://getbybus.com/en/) who are aggregators. Do check out the ratings and reviews of the operator to make sure you pick the right bus for your travel. They can charge you for heavy luggage, so keep change handy. But we would recommend the trains which are very efficient and fast.
The buses in Salzburg
Travel in Austria – Train
You can get details of the Austrian train service OBB on their website here (https://www.oebb.at/en/). The trains are clean, fast and efficient. Booking tickets is easy and we had a very smooth experience. We booked on OBB for our trip from Bad Ishcl to Hallstatt, Salzburg to Vienna and Vienna to Budapest.
The OBB Railjet train
Other Tips
Make sure you keep enough buffer between transfers in your journey so that you don’t miss out on a bus/train. It is always better to reach a place early than deal with the frustration of missing a connection.
We always recommend making your bookings atleast a week or two in advance to ensure that you get a seat (preferably, a reserved seat). Also, advance bookings can get you some good deals! Keep your eye out for these.
Where to Stay
If you have checked out our Croatian blog, you would have come across our Golden Rule – to have our stay close to the main attractions while having access to the transit systems. The access part is kept at higher priority as it is convenient when you’re moving in/out with your luggage. We found it very convenient everywhere in Austria as the cities have been designed with great connectivity.
Salzburg: We stayed at Hotel Turnerwirt which was less than 3km from the city centre. There was a bus stop very close to the hotel and was at walking distance from the Salzburg Gnigl station.
Salzkammergut: We made our base at St. Gilgen as it gave us a nice central location to plan our day trips. There are many lovely homestays in St. Gilgen and we stayed at one called Eislbauerhof which had a really nice view of the lake and the entire valley.
Vienna: There are a lot of places to pick from in Vienna. We stayed at an Airbnb with the only criteria that it was very close to a metro station (mainly because we were staying just for one night). Had we planned for a longer stay, we would have picked something close enough to the palaces and museums.
This should get you going on your tickets and accommodation in Austria.
The capital of Austria, Vienna is also considered a hotspot for art and culture in the whole of Europe. With beautiful palaces, museums where you could spend days exploring, operas, musical shows and old coffee shops, Vienna has a lot to offer everyone who visits.
Vienna was the last stop in our Austria trip. It was a short stay – just one day. We arrived at the Vienna train station from Salzburg and left most of our luggage in a locker there – we had to be back the next day for our train to Budapest, so it didn’t make sense to carry all our luggage around the city.
We picked up a 24-hour travel pass and took the metro to Schwedenplatz, which was the starting point of the Ring tram. We picked up some sandwiches, sat on a bench and made our plan for the day. We had a couple of must-do items on our list which we had to fit into our route and the rest depended on our mood and energy levels. As we got to the end of our sandwiches, we had decided to skip the Ring tram and instead do a walking tour. We took the metro to Stephansplatz where we started our walk. Our first stop was the St. Stephan’s Cathedral – a beautiful and imposing Gothic style building with huge pillars inside.
St. Stephan’s CathedralInside the cathedral
We continued our walk behind the cathedral to Mozarthaus (yes, he had one here as well in addition to the ones in Salzburg and St. Gilgen. We kept walking past the Trinity Column and St. Peter’s church.
The Trinity Column or Plague Column is a very interesting sculpture – made over a period of more than 10 years by various sculptors and indicating the transition to the Baroque era.
The Trinity Column
A narrow street then took us to Michaelerplatz and the famous Hofburg Palace. Built in the 13th century, this palace served as the imperial residence of the Habsburg dynasty. As we walked in, we could see many horse carriages with tourists going around the square. We skipped the Spanish riding school and went to the Imperial Treasury.
The place was unlike anything we’d ever seen – dresses of knights, archdukes and kings, gold embroidery, crowns with rubies and diamonds, crown and jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, staffs embedded with jewels and even a cradle which was gifted to Napoleon II.
Dresses of kingsJewels from the erstwhile empire
We then walked to the Vienna State Opera (Wiener Staatsoper) and found out that there was a performance that evening of Swan Lake. We had read on a blog that they usually gave out really cheap standing tickets right before every show – you just had to be at the right place at the right time. We asked around and found the counter – we were told to come back at 7 and we could get tickets.
Our next stop was the Natural History Museum – one of the best in the world!
The Natural History Museum in Vienna – a must-visit!
There are close to 40 halls with exhibits spread across the two floors of the museum. Each one was dedicated to a different aspect of the earth – gems, meteorites, mammals, dinosaurs, mammoths and plenty more. It reminded us of the movie “Night at the Museum” where these artifacts came to life every night (that was the American Museum of Natural History). While we spent over an hour in the museum, it still felt like too little. This is definitely one for next time.
Look out!Walking with dinosaursWhat is the first word that came to your mind – was it Hogwarts?
We were hungry by now and looked for the famous traditional Viennese cafe – Cafe Sperl. It was beautiful inside with warm lighting and we managed to get the cozy seats near the window. Sitting there in that cafe from 1880, we felt like we were transported back in time. We ordered Wiener schnitzel, Viennese cold coffee, a “tall brauner” (double mocha) and a cheesecake while we soaked in the atmosphere.
The cozy interiors of a Viennese cafeCannot visit Vienna without having a wiener schnitzel!
Stomachs full and minds refreshed, we walked to the Naschmarkt – the most popular market in town. You can find all kinds of cuisine here – Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian and of course, Austrian. We even found Indian spice shops there!
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It was almost 7pm and we had to rush back to the Opera to get our tickets. Thanks to the earlier visit, we knew exactly where to go and we managed to get 2 tickets for 6 euros (the normal tickets cost well over 150 euros per person!).
Yaay! We got tickets to the Opera!
As we climbed up to the third floor, we could sense the history of this place. Built in the 1860’s the opera can seat over 1700 people. The marble staircases and portraits on the walls reminded us of Harry Potter.
Some more Hogwarts? This time inside the State Opera House
We also felt out of place looking at the richly dressed people entering the premium seating area – we had worn the best set of clothes we were carrying and we were nowhere close to fitting in. We entered the standing area – we could see the entire hall shaped like a bowl with the stage on one side. The orchestra was seated at the lowest level just below the stage – there were all kinds of instruments – violins, cello, harps, you name it, it was there!
The curtains slowly opened and the chattering audience instantly went silent. There were more than 50 performers and they all moved so gracefully in one fluid motion that they felt like one unit. The music transported us back to childhood when we had heard the Swan Lake track in Disney movies. The ballet dancers balanced perfectly on their toes and as they twirled round and round, we had goosebumps. I even noticed some happy tears from Nam and a few others around – it really was moving!
An experience of a lifetime!
The show paused for the interval and we decided to head back to our room. It had been a really long day starting at St. Gilgen and we had been walking all day. While our minds wanted to stay till the end of the show, our bodies needed the rest as we were only halfway into our trip. We took the tram to Schwedenplatz and the metro to Stephansplatz. For dinner, we picked up some hot dogs (the “wurst” kind).
We had to take two more metro rides to get close to the Airbnb we had booked. The host had a ton of rules (he seemed a bit crazy about cleanliness) and the apartment was quite basic. Most Airbnbs we’d stayed at so far had been good without much hassle and this was our first weird experience. Thankfully we were dead tired and crashed as soon as we hit the bed.
We woke up at our farmhouse in St. Gilgen admiring the view of the lake and mountains. Today, we would visit Hallstatt and Dachstein, both part of the Salzkammergut region.
A morning view can’t get any better
We had an early start to finalize our plan for the day (yes, we do leave some things flexible till the end). It felt like a plan with a lot of dependencies but we decided to go ahead with it anyway.
There are few places in the world which can rival the pristine beauty of Switzerland – Salzkammergut is one of them! Salzkammergut translates to “salt domain” and lies to the east of Salzburg all the way to the Dachstein mountains. The region is also called the Lake District as it is home to over 30 lakes nestled in between scenic hills and mountains. The geography of the region also makes it an ideal place for resorts and skiing during winters. It is also home to the iconic Hallstatt – which I’m sure a lot of you would have seen somewhere on the internet! So let’s get right into our journey!
A beautiful town in the west of Austria, Salzburg is the perfect example of where nature meets culture. Sitting on the banks of the Salzach river, Salzburg is home to the legendary Mozart and has everything from beautiful gardens to palaces to an amazing medieval fortress and of course some amazing food. Salzburg literally means “Salt Fortress” referring to the huge salt mines around the area.
Arriving at Salzburg
We spent an entire day exploring the town during our Austria trip (check out our complete itinerary here). We arrived at Salzburg by train from Prague – we had to change into another train at Linz before reaching Salzburg. From the train station, we took a bus to our hotel. It is easy to navigate your way around in Austria – there are maps everywhere and with some amount of prior research, you can easily use public transport without having to sacrifice anything in your itinerary.
Amman is the capital city of Jordan. It is the largest city in the country and lies sprawled across hills and valleys. Our first reaction upon landing in Amman was that of awe – we felt like we were somewhere in Europe with lush green meadows and great roads. The stereotypical “Middle-east” image in our minds was shattered.
The city of Amman lies spread across seven hillsThroughout Jordan we found good roads
It lies on the ancient King’s Highway – the main trade route connecting Africa with Mesopotamia. Neolithic human settlements have been found in the areas around Amman dating back to 7000 BC. The city was named Philadelphia by the Greek when they took over the region around 250 BC.
Two of the most iconic places in Jordan are Petra and the Wadi Rum desert.
Petra
Petra is one of the most prominent symbols of Jordan. The name Petra is derived from the Greek word “petros” for “rocks”. The rock in the region is rose in colour, giving it the name “Rose City”.
The capital city of the Nabataeans, one of the nomadic Bedouin tribes around the 4th century BC, Petra is considered to be an archaeological wonder. The city is a masterpiece in rainwater harvesting and stone carving – the smart Nabataeans turning the mountainous barren terrain to their advantage by converting it into an oasis. They used dams and canals to control flash floods and stored water for the dry season.
It entered the list of the New 7 Wonders of the World in 2007 – we ticked off our second Wonder of the trip, having covered the Egyptian Pyramids just a few days back (blog coming soon). Petra has appeared in many movies, the most remembered one being Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This has, in fact, become a strong tourist hook for the ancient city, with Indiana Jones hats being a popular item in the souvenir shops at the entrance!
