Vienna coffeehouses

Vienna is famous for its coffeehouses, so you would think they'd be magnets drawing me to try each and every one. I didn't have time to get to many, but here are a few of the more famous and also some I particularly liked.

The cafe at the Hotel Sacher is on the right on the corner here. The hotel is famous for its Sacher-Torte, dating back to a secret recipe created here in 1832. The hotel takes up the entire block immediately behind the Opera House, at the lower end of the shopping street Kärtnerstrasse. I was planning to start my day here yesterday, but it wasn't open yet, so I went across the street to Starbucks.

Cafe Central on Herrengasse is recommended in the tourist books. I found it walking over to the Rathaus yesterday and planned to make this my last stop of the day, but I was so tired by then I skipped it.

The Schönbrunn Palace has a wonderful full-service Cafe, where I stopped to have lunch. I was thinking of something with protein (hamburger? soup?), but couldn't resist the apple struddel and cappuccino. The cafe seating includes elegant settees along with the brentwood chairs and the wait staff never seemed to rush anybody wanting to linger.

And here is one of my favorites from my visit in October, the rooftop cafe at the Leopold Museum in the Museums Quarter. The great view and even better food made up for the cheap plastic furniture.

Almost every sit-down cafe in Vienna, Prague, and Bratislava follows the wonderful practice of serving a small glass of mineral water with cappuccino, to wash down the richness. I wish American restaurants would do the same -- but first they'll have to learn how to make a decent cup of coffee.

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