Vienna – first impressions

Recently I was fortunate to visit the lovely city of Vienna, Austria for one week. What a beautiful city! I love the architecture and the museums. Oh – so many museums! And the churches – I am a sucker for an old church, and they have a lot of old churches! We arrived in Vienna late at night, and our hotel was right in the center of the city, right across from St. Stephen’s Cathedral. You could not stay anywhere closer to the heart of the city. The hotel where we stayed was Do & Co, in a modern building nestled into the old buildings around the plaza. I found this about the hotel on the design hotels website:

“DO & CO Hotel Vienna started as Attila Dogudan’s Viennese empire of restaurants and luxury catering, but now includes an architecturally adventurous and sybaritic hotel experience in downtown Vienna. Located across from St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the Haas Haus building was designed by Pritzker-prize winner Hans Hollein; later, in an unusual move, it was retrofitted to its present incarnation by Hollein himself.

The same attention to detail that carried Attila Dogudan from local restaurateur to international food celebrity has been applied to Vienna’s DO & CO Hotel. Four floors of the steel-and-glass building have been transformed into 44 unique cone-shaped guestrooms offering majestic views of Stephansplatz, Graben and the Kärtnerstrasse. Extravagant accommodations feature teak woodwork and stone integrated into a futuristic vision of modern design.”

As this plaza is a pedestrian only zone, our taxi dropped us off at the nearest street where we were met by hotel staff to guide us to the hotel. The ground floor entrance is fairly unassuming, but I knew immediately that we were in for a treat. The hotel rooms occupy 4 floors of the building, and our room faced the plaza. It felt like you could almost reach out and touch the Cathedral.

After checking in, we went for a wander along the Graben – a beautiful shopping street – also pedestrian only. I tried to take a few photos  that captured the mood of the area. The temperature was pleasant and if not for the jet lag I could have wandered for hours.

The first evening was a lovely introduction to the city, and I’ll carry on with our tour in upcoming posts.