Car Hire Vienna - Airport, Austria

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First time visiting Vienna? We want you to get the most from your rental car Vienna experience. For that reason, we have enlisted the assistance of a local travel expert to help get you on your way. Follow these important travel tips and enjoy the very best that Vienna is offering.

The good thing about my home town Vienna, Austria: It is perfect for a relaxed city break. The bad thing: It can challenge you when squeezing the amount of lovely things to see and do there into your schedules. Here is a selection of my local favourites to complete your plans for a car hire in Vienna.

See: Nothing beats a day at Schonbrunn Palace, the baroque former residence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s Habsburg family. Wander through the palace’s sumptuous rooms, stroll through the gardens, have coffee at the Gloriette belvedere, visit the award winning local zoo, or enjoy the historic marionette theater (my personal trump card, as few people know about it).

My Portuguese in-laws were the most recent of my family to discover and love the Museum of Fine Arts (Kunsthistorisches Museum), the most popular Vienna museum of both travelers and the Viennese themselves. Its major art works by Brueghel, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Tintoretto, Titian, and Vermeer make it one of the leading princely collections in Europe.

If you are into modern art, don’t miss the Museumsquartier (MQ), a complex of more than ten Vienna museums and cultural institutions located in the baroque former Imperial Stables.

Do you like interior design, sculptures and art objects? I love to get inspired in the Vienna Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art (MAK), and the Imperial Furniture Collection (Hofmobiliendepot). My favourites at the MAK are the collection of neatly arranged Thonet (coffeehouse) furniture and the dozens of Biedermeier chairs in all shapes, colours and sizes. The Hofmobiliendepot is the largest collection of furniture and of Biedermeier interiors in the world, thanks to the Habsburgs’ countless residences and furnishing needs.

Videos of Vienna

Shop: The Naschmarkt, Vienna’s deli and flea market heaven, is best for cheap and cheerful Vienna shopping. My mother and her best friend Georgie, both passionate cooks and street market addicts, roam Naschmarkt every Saturday for local farmers’ produce, and the flea market for hand bags, gem stones, glass ware, silver spoons, and Austrian folkloric clothes for children.

The Dorotheum, the largest antiques’ store in Vienna for 300 years, is a little more upmarket for buyers of vintage art, fine art and jewellery. Check out the ceramics, glass and silverware in the Glashof on the ground floor, and the jewellery on the second floor.

For traditional Austrian fashion, head for Weihburggasse close to St. Stephen’s Cathedral, where you will find lovely Goessl shop, stocking stunning though a little pricey classics; and Original Salzburger Trachtenoutlet, which offers a mix of authentic and newly interpreted traditional fashion.

Local quality jewellery shops that you won’t find anywhere else are Skrein, creator of poetic pieces of handcrafted gold jewellery, and Hartmann Brilliance, which offers slick yet sensual jewellery made of natural horn.

Eat: You can easily work your way up the ‘food chain’ of Viennese eateries while enjoying authentic local dishes at all levels. Our Vienna sausage is world famous, and best be eaten at one of the many sausage stands in town. The best are Bitzinger’s Wuerstelstand between the Vienna State Opera and the Albertina, The Wuerstelstand Am Hohen Markt, and the Wuerstelstand Am Stadtpark.

My favourite snack bars in Vienna have one thing in common: They use our great dark sourdough bread, from local institutions Trzesniewski and chic Zum Schwarzen Kameel to new comer Porcus, which lets you savour the old Austrian Empire’s crown lands’ rich tradition of pork dishes.

My two top choices of good bourgeois restaurants in the mid price segment are more popular than ever: Vienna beef king Plachutta, who runs six local eateries, and the modernist Oesterreicher im MAK, whose local celebrity chef Helmut Oesterreicher dishes up freshly interpreted Viennese cuisine in a place that brilliantly blends urban design with elements of traditional local taverns.

If you like to celebrate special occasions and life itself, head for new revelation Silvio Nickol Gourmet Restaurant, run by two Michelin star chef Silvio Nickol, and for restaurant Steirereck im Stadtpark, Austria’s officially best restaurant and a real institution with local business people. My special insider tip is private dining newcomer Sibylle Fellner’s Hofzeile 27, located at her own home in Vienna’s leafy noble suburb Doebling. This gets you close to real Vienna while you enjoy top class Austrian cuisine.

Drink: Vienna is the city of coffee and wine and hence hosts dozens of cafes and wine taverns (Heurige). If you had time to visit three of each, select locally popular places that represent a mix of traditional and modern (with cafes); and country side and traditional (with wineries): Café Hawelka, shabby chic artist coffee house, Café Diglas, traditional café with delicious cakes, nice menu and live piano music, and modern architect-designed Kunsthalle Café, popular with local students, families and business people.

My local friend Babsi grew up and lives in Grinzing, Vienna’s prime winery district. Our top choices that we agree on are Buschenschank Worseg, located in the midst of the vineyards with a spectacular view of Vienna; the Weingut am Reisenberg, a next generation winery with equally great city views; and well established Heuriger Schuebel-Auer in downtown Nussdorf, a part of Grinzing.

Stay: If I was a tourist in Vienna, I would be hard pressed to choose from the accommodation available, from hotels and apartments, to Bed and Breakfasts. In the hotel sector, you get great value for money compared to other European city destinations, from budget hotels like the recently opened Motel One on Westbahnhof, middle of the road places like Hotel am Stephansplatz, to design hotels such as Das Triest and luxury institutions like the famous Hotel Sacher.

A totally new hotel concept is Urbanauts, which lets you stay in an abandoned original street lofts offering urban relaxed chic while being closely connected to the local neighbourhood.

As to apartments, I like the centrally located and well refurbished Apartments Riemergasse and great value Spiess and Spiess, while my top Bed and Breakfast choices are romantic Pension Aviano and Pension A und A.

Photos of Vienna

Walk: Start out in Vienna’s baroque old town, a UNESCO world heritage site, which includes the large ‘town-in-town’ complex of the former Imperial Palace (Hofburg), and most of the best museums, cafes, restaurants, and shops. The Viennese municipality offers a great map for walks (click on Art and Leisure, then scroll down to City Walks, and click on Atrium Houses) through some of the best historic 17^th and 18^th century courtyards, called Pawlatschen.

A nice walk for lovers of Art Nouveau that will take you from Gustav Klimt (In 2012 Vienna celebrates 150 years of Gustav Klimt) to Otto Wagner leads from the Karlsplatz on to Naschmarkt and the fourth district.

The best parks and gardens in Vienna for strolls are the gardens of Schonbrunn Palace, the Stadtpark, and the Volksgarten close to the Imperial Palace (Hofburg).

You can also rent a city bike or take a guided bike tour along Vienna’s boulevard Ringstrasse, the old town and the Danube island.

Get Out: The Vienneses’ favourite outdoors are located in the Vienna Woods, theme of Johann Strauss waltz and a novel turned into a play and a film (Tales from the Vienna Woods). Visit the locals’ week end favourite Kahlenberg driving along scenic Hoehenstrasse, and then on for a walk in the green and more wineries, or head south to the Thermal Springs region (Thermenregion) for a spa and casino treat.

Another great location for a day out is UNESCO world heritage site Wachau Valley along the Danube. It will take you around 30 minutes by car from Vienna to visit Richard Lionheart’s former prison at Duernstein, Melk’s world famous baroque abbey, and the many picturesque villages and wineries situated amidst vineyards and apricot orchards.

Listen: As the capital of classical music, there are loads of concerts, operas and operettas on offer. For first time visitors to Vienna, it can be hard to select truly original events frequented by locals and travellers alike. My advice: Stick to concerts at the Wiener Musikverein, the Wiener Konzerthaus, and side locations such as the baroque church St. Anna, or those performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Wiener Symphoniker or the Wiener Tonkuenstler Orchester.

For opera, the two most popular locations are the Vienna State Opera for classical operas and ballets, and the Theater an der Wien, a renowned centre for both baroque and modern operas. My insider tips for people who like a more intimate and informal experience of opera are the Kleines Wiener Operntheater, which performs in the spacious basement of Café Prueckel,  and the L.E.O. (Letztes Erfreuliches Operntheater).

Few people know that Vienna is one of the prime electronic music places in Europe, having generated internationally successful bands such as Kruder and Dorfmeister, and Pulsinger. The annual Wien Modern Festival is a good occasion to dive into Vienna’s modern music scene.

Avoid: If you are after original experiences of real everyday Vienna, save yourself tourist- only events such as horse carriage rides and tourist concerts as promoted in the streets of the old town and in front of tourist attractions.