Austria sells three kinds of day. Pick one and the week builds itself.
An evening in a gilded hall, a palace before the gates fill, or a coach over the Salzkammergut passes. Reviews of every tour, concert ticket and day trip you can book in Austria, with what each one costs.
In a hall, after darkVivaldi under a painted dome, Mozart in costume, a quartet in a church.from $10
A palace before the queueSchönbrunn and the Hofburg on a timed slot, ahead of the coaches.from $14
Out past the lakesEarly coach west, a lake village at lunch, back in Vienna for dinner.from $44 A concert, a palace, a lake village, and the Salzburg day.
The four bookings a first Austrian week is built around. What each costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The first nightVivaldi’s Four Seasons Concert in KarlskircheFour Seasons under Karlskirche’s painted dome. Musicians in period dress, and the acoustics do the rest.
02The palace morningSchönbrunn Palace & Gardens Skip-the-Line TourSchönbrunn on a timed slot, the state rooms first and the gardens after, before the afternoon coaches arrive.
03The Salzburg dayThe Original Sound of Music Tour in SalzburgMirabell, the lake country and the church from the wedding scene. Sung along to, whether you meant to or not.
04The long day westHallstatt & Alpine Peaks Day Trip with Skywalk LiftHallstatt on the water, then the Dachstein lift to a walkway hanging off the rock. Leaves Vienna early.
Two capitals of music, a lake village, and a valley full of rafts.
Vienna for the halls and the palaces, Salzburg for Mozart and the lake country, Innsbruck for the mountains at the end of the street. Six places, and the best day out in each.
Vienna, the Wachau, Hallstatt, Salzburg: the week almost everybody does first.
The Wachau
Hallstatt
Salzburg
Innsbruck
GrazThe Danube does the driving between Vienna and Melk.
Sixty miles of terraced vineyards, apricot orchards and ruined castles, with an abbey the colour of egg yolk at the far end. Boats run downstream fast and upstream slowly, and the bike path along the bank is flat the whole way.
Vienna asks three questions, and they all have prices.
Everything in Vienna →
Which hall, which palace, and where the afternoon goes. Answer those and the rest of the city is walkable. These three carry more travellers than anything else inside the Ring.
A church, a palace, or the Musikverein
The churches are the cheap way in and the acoustics are genuinely good. Schönbrunn’s Orangery gives you costume and a Baroque room. The Musikverein is the one the orchestras themselves want to play.
Hofburg and Sisi, or Schönbrunn
The Hofburg is the winter palace and holds the Sisi rooms and the silver collection. Schönbrunn is the summer one, with the gardens and the Gloriette above them. Doing both in a day is possible and not enjoyable.
Strudel, a Melange and a marble table
The strudel classes end with the thing you just pulled by hand, warm. After that the rule in a Kaffeehaus is that one coffee rents the table, and nobody will come to move you on.
The Austrian days out travellers book before they land.
The whole Austrian catalogue →The tours more people take than anything else in the country, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Concert in Karlskirche
Spend 75 minutes inside Vienna’s Karlskirche with Orchestra 1756, a period-instrument ensemble performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Expect a string ensemble, basso continuo, and one or two changing works by Mozart, Bach, Biber, or another major composer. The church can be cold in winter and hot in summer, so dress for the season.
From · $40
Read our review →
2
Spanish Riding School Training
from $20
3
Skip-the-cashier-desk-line Giant Ferris Wheel Ride
from $17
4
Schönbrunn Palace & Gardens Skip-the-Line Tour
from $63
5
Light of Creation Votive Church Immersive Light Show
from $25
6
Vienna Spanish Riding School Guided Tour
from $28
7
Classical Concert in the World-Famous Musikverein
from $17
8
The Original Sound of Music Tour in Salzburg
from $90
Salzburg is a fortress, a film set and a lake district, in ten square blocks.
The old town sits under a cliff with a castle on top, Mozart was born four streets away, and the lake country the film crews used starts twenty minutes past the ring road. The same morning can cover all three.
More from Salzburg & the lakes →
In Innsbruck the mountain is at the end of the shopping street.
A funicular and two cable cars lift you from the middle of town to 2,300 metres in twenty minutes. West of the city the Inn valley narrows into the gorges the rafting companies work, and the paragliders launch off the shoulder above them.
- 1Tyrolean Evenings Family Gundolf in Innsbruckfrom $45
- 2Top of Innsbruck: Roundtrip Cable Car Ticketfrom $59
- 3Innsbruck Swarovski Crystal Worlds Ticket and Transferfrom $40
Church, palace or the Musikverein. The night costs whatever you choose.
Vienna and Salzburg between them put on a concert most nights of the year. The differences that matter are the room, the size of the ensemble and whether the players are in costume.
The spread between a church recital and a private Alpine day.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A concert ticket in a Vienna church costs less than lunch beside it.
Church concerts, palace entries, city walks and the salt-mine tickets out in the Salzkammergut.
The full days: Hallstatt and the Dachstein, the Sound of Music run, Wachau cruises, Bratislava and back.
Private guides, the Musikverein with dinner, and the once-a-trip nights that earn it.
Four Austrian bookings that run on somebody else’s calendar.
Most of this country can be sorted the night before over a glass of Grüner. These four run on training schedules, hall calendars and a single daily departure, and none of them care when your flight lands.
- 01Spanish Riding School TrainingThe stallions train on a published weekly schedule and perform on far fewer dates than that. Neither is arranged around visitors.
- 02Classical Concert in the World-Famous MusikvereinThe hall belongs to its orchestras first. Tourist-facing dates are whatever is left, and the good ones go months out.
- 03The Original Sound of Music Tour in SalzburgOne departure a day in the shoulder season, and the coaches fill from the hotels before they reach the online seats.
- 04Hallstatt & Alpine Peaks Day Trip with Skywalk LiftThe village caps day visitors and the coaches leave Vienna before eight. Turn up late and you are doing it as a very long drive.
Half of Austria is only open half the year.
The markets run from the middle of November to Christmas Eve and then vanish overnight. The rafts run once the snowmelt settles, roughly May to September. The high lifts shut for weeks between seasons. The concert halls are the one thing that plays straight through, which is why they anchor a winter trip.
The lake country starts an hour past the last tram stop.
Austria is small enough that the mountains are a day trip from either capital. Hallstatt and the Dachstein west of Vienna, the salt mines and Berchtesgaden south of Salzburg, and cable cars at both ends.
Three Austrian habits that never travelled.
Palaces and mountains are all over central Europe. A horse-drawn cab with a licence plate, a film tour the locals have never seen, and a mine you enter by sliding down a wooden banister are not.
The Fiaker
The two-horse cabs on Stephansplatz and Michaelerplatz are a regulated trade, not a costume. Drivers hold a licence, the horses work fixed hours with mandated breaks, and the routes are set. Thirty minutes covers the Ring and the old town lanes; an hour adds the Hofburg courtyards and the quiet streets behind the cathedral.
- 130-Minute Fiaker Ride in the Old Town★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,092 reviews
- 2Secrets of the Fiaker & Horse-Drawn Carriage Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 743 reviews
- 3Imperial Carriage Museum in Schönbrunn Palace Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 339 reviews
The Film Tour
The film was a modest success in Austria and most Salzburgers have never sat through it, which does nothing to slow the coaches. The route takes in Mirabell’s gardens, the lake houses at Leopoldskron and Fuschl, and the church at Mondsee where the wedding was shot. Singing on board is not optional in practice.
- 1The Original Sound of Music Tour in Salzburg★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 6,129 reviews
- 2Hallstatt and Sound of Music Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 522 reviews
- 3Salzburg Super Saver: Original Sound of Music and Salt Mines Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 345 reviews
The Salt Mines
Salt paid for the Baroque, and the mines that produced it still run tours in the hills above Hallstatt and Berchtesgaden. You put on the miners’ overalls, ride a wooden train into the rock, and get between levels the way the miners did, down a polished slide with a timing camera at the bottom.
- 1Salt Mine Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 258 reviews
- 2Salzwelten Altaussee: Salt Mine Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 60 reviews
- 3Alpine Majesty: Eagle’s Nest, Salt Mine Salzburg & Berchtesgaden★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 15 reviews
By place — the cities and the valleys
Added to the Austrian list this week.
The rest of the new ones →
Private Werfen Ice Cave and Golling Waterfall from Salzburg
Read our review →
Alpine Majesty: Eagle’s Nest, Salt Mine Salzburg & Berchtesgaden
Read our review →
Private Tour: Eagle’s Nest and Bavarian Alps Tour from Salzburg
Read our review →
Guided e-bike tour of the alpine pastures in the Salzkammergut
Read our review →
Christmas/Advent Concert at Fortress Hohensalzburg
Read our review →
