Vienna With Kids Is Easier Than Paris, and Nobody Says So

Every family asks me about Paris first. Almost none of them ask about Vienna, and Vienna is the one I would hand a nervous first timer.

The trams and the U-Bahn go everywhere, they run on time, and children under six ride free. You buy one pass at the airport and you do not think about transport again for a week. That alone removes half the stress of a first European city with kids.

Schonbrunn is the palace everyone photographs, and the part families should care about is behind it. The zoo in the palace gardens is the oldest in the world and one of the best. Pandas, a rainforest house, a petting area, and a maze next door. You can do the palace tour in forty minutes and the gardens all afternoon.

The Prater is a real amusement park in the middle of the city with the giant Ferris wheel from every film you have seen. Go at dusk. The rides are pay per ride, so a family can spend twenty euros or two hundred and both are a good evening.

Then there is the cake. Sachertorte at the Sacher is a tourist thing and I would still do it once. Apfelstrudel at a neighborhood cafe with a hot chocolate is the daily version. Viennese cafes let you sit for two hours over one order, which is exactly what a family with tired legs needs at four in the afternoon.

The one thing to book ahead

A concert. Not the tourist one in a costume, the real one. The Musikverein and the Konzerthaus both sell cheap standing and side seats, and kids over eight can sit through the first half of a program and leave at the interval. Nobody minds. It is Vienna, they are used to it.

Planning Austria with kids? Start with the full Austria family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.