Location: Austria

I have visited 3 different cities in Austria, and they were on Expat Explore's Eastern Highlights tour. I realise that Austria isn't really considered to be eastern Europe as it is more central, but we visited Austria several times on the way back to Germany to end the tour.

Vienna

We spent one night here in August 2015 after the short drive from Slovakian capital of Bratislava. My favourite place in Vienna was Belvedere Palace(Shown Below). With the sun shining the photo opportunities here are fantastic both at the front and around the back.

As we walked around the city of Vienna we checked out some of the other famous buildings. During our visit there was also a film festival going on, with a big display screen in the city centre. In the evening there is an amusement park with one of the oldest ferris wheels in the world. It is called Wiener Riesenrad locally and costs €10 at the time of writing. I remember clearly there was 7 of us from our group that went on this ride and as we approached the top we all made the classic 'oooh' tourist sound.

View from the top.

 

Salzburg

I remember stopping at a service station just before we got to Salzburg and even the views from there were amazing. Salzburg itself was also very nice when we got there, it is the birthplace of Mozart and where 'The Sound of Music' was filmed. We parked the coach up and took a stroll into the centre of the old town. I remember walking over the bridge with locks on looking up towards the castle on the hill before getting into the very centre. I had visited several castles in previous cities on this tour so decided to give this one a miss as it wasn't free unlike Bratislava.

Service station view.

Salzburg castle.

To go inside Mozart's house it costs €11 at the time of writing. I did not do this however, I walked past and took a photo of it as I wanted to explore the old town further as we had around 2.5 hours here.

Graz

The other city I visited in Austria on this tour was in Graz. This was a lunch stop visit before leading onto Ljubljana, Slovenia. This was free time and as we split from the tour guide I walked towards the town centre called Hauptplatz. I remember it been around 30°C so I took a lift up the hill for a great view looking back down on the city. There is one building that stands out in particular when looking down and that's the Kunsthaus(Art museum).

You can find my 6 videos from this whole tour, covering the 3 Austrian cities mentioned above here.