Time Out Vienna (Time Out Guides)

There’s much more than chocolate cake and waltzes lurking behind the porticoes of Vienna’s sprawling Baroque palaces and in the mezzanines of its elegant 19th-century apartment houses. Time Out Vienna showcases the city’s heady history and its contemporary sophistication. The city's signature fin-de-siècle architectural marvels are described in depth, as are the splendors of the Danube waterfront. Informed local writers profile the best of the city’s lively restaurant scene, chilled club culture, historic cafés, and restful wine taverns; as well as accommodations for every budget from simple pensiones to historic hotels. With complete coverage of the city’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in 2006, this edition also contains updated maps and rechecked listings, along with new sidebars, photographs, and a culture chapter for context.

 (3 customer reviews)

The current edition of Time Out Vienna is about half the size of the previous one. The previous edition was wonderful, with much more information on cultural sites, museums, cafes, etc. What remains in this over-edited -- yet not, by the way, cheaper -- edition is basically a list of hotels and shops. The few museums, etc., mentioned are wedged into neighborhood 'sightseeing' chapters, as though the main factor in choosing a museum were locale. The end result seems quite shallow, even cynical, and a bit sad, apparently aimed at weekending yuppies on breezy consumption jaunts rather than travelers truly interested in the city. Further, this edition carries much outdated and erroneous information; many of the listed restaurants have closed down, and directions and opening hours are grossly wrong, as if the writers failed to visit the spots recommended. The only value of the new edition is providing prices in euros. If you can, get a used version of the previous edition -- the one...Read more

I was very happy with this book - I was interested mostly in shopping and restaurants, since I had already done all the touristy type stuff in a previous visit to Vienna. It lists things by district, the maps are easy to follow, it has both an alphabetical and street index, and it is small enough to carry around. The restaurant reviews were right on - I went by this guide for about 10 meals/drinks/desserts (all of which were great), and helped me discover places I would have overlooked. It includes restaurants for ALL budgets. The shopping guide helped me find niche shops and boutiques, not just chains, and also a lot of the stuff that I discovered on my own and LOVED was already in the book once I looked back to check on it. Even though I didn't use the sightseeing section as extensively as the restaurant and shopping guide, it is superpacked with background info and pictures. I picked this book over lonely planet and let's go since it was the most recently published of the 3, and...Read more

Good all-around guide, but the Michelin Green Guide to Vienna is more comprehensive (although without the hotel, restaurant and shopping listings). This one is a good one volume all-round guide, but it has stupid mistakes such as saying that Vienna's largest cemetary is the Karl-Marx-Hof (it's the Zentralfriedhof). The blue pages with practical advice are excellent as are the maps. Sometimes the tone is a bit snide which is more than a little off-putting.

Enter at your own risk.