SOFITEL VIENNA STEPHANSDOM—Designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Jean Nouvel, this new glass-and-steel tower near St. Stephen’s delivers 182 tasteful guest rooms furnished in minimalist crème, gray, and black, with fabulous views of the city and the Vienna Woods. The lobby features a magnificent vertical garden, covering one multistory wall with 20,000 species of vegetation, and the top floor’s glass-encased Le Loft restaurant includes dazzling panoramic views. INFO: Tel 43/1-906-160; www.sofitel-vienna.com. Cost: from $290 (off-peak), from $490 (peak); dinner $100.
EATING & DRINKING
DEMEL AND SACHER—Open since 1887, Demel is the high temple of Viennese pastry and one of the reasons this city is known as Europe’s pastry capital, setting up an Olympic-size array of more than 60 confections in its music-box-perfect front rooms. The five-layer chocolate Anna torte and the profoundly rich chocolate Sacher torte are house specialties. Compare the goods at the Hotel Sacher’s café (both insist they have the original secret recipe). Demel’s usually wins out; however, Sacher’s strudel (mit Schlagobers—with whipped cream) knows no rival. DEMEL: Tel 43/1-535-17170; www.demel.at. SACHER: Tel 43/1-514-560; www.sacher.com.
EIN WIENER SALON—Designed like a stylish Viennese drawing room, with midnight blue wallpaper and outsize portraits of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I, this small, romantic eatery offers imaginative four- to six-course menus that change with the seasons. You might find chickpea soup with smoked duck breast and homemade celery ravioli with beetroot and caviar. INFO: Tel 43/1-660-654-2785; www.einwienersalon.com. Cost: dinner $55.
THE HEURIGER EXPERIENCE—At these rustic alfresco wine taverns, sprinkled along the edge of the nearby Vienna Woods (the Wienerwald), large quantities of wine help generate an atmosphere alive with bonhomie, singing, and shameless Viennese accordion schmaltz. The simple Viennese fare typically includes hearty soups, potato dumplings, and wild game dishes. Beethoven lived at Mayer am Pfarrplatz in 1817; today it’s a favorite Heuriger. INFO: Tel 43/1-3703361; www.pfarrplatz.at. Cost: dinner $40.
HOLLMANN SALON—Step into the city’s most beautiful courtyard, where cobblestones and Baroque façades front art galleries, private homes, and this stylish restaurant. Beneath the vaulted ceilings hung with steel antler chandeliers lie long wooden tables and an open stainless-steel kitchen that bestow a chic Austrian farmhouse warmth. Three- and four-course menus are driven by seasonal local ingredients: You may find standouts such as marinated venison with baked apple pancake, honey nuts, and plum mousse and crispy carp on mashed horseradish with gherkin in piccalilli chutney. INFO: Tel 43/1-961-196-040; www.hollmann-salon.at. Cost: dinner $45.
PALMENHAUS—Overlooking the imperial gardens, the spectacular Art Nouveau conservatory where Emperor Franz Joseph came to relax now serves fine Austrian fare with a contemporary twist. Savor your meal amid the glass-and-steel eatery’s gargantuan ancient palms. INFO: Tel 43/1-533-1033; www.palmenhaus.at. Cost: dinner $45.
STEIRERECK IM STADTPARK—One of Austria’s finest and most beloved restaurants and the innovator of New Viennese Cuisine, the Steirereck offers elaborate dishes that arrive with their own recipe card and are made with fresh local produce and products from chef Heinz Reitbauer’s farm. Enjoy grilled guinea fowl with porcini fig duxelles, or veal with raw marinated scallops and black salsify. At Meierei, the adjacent white-on-white dairy bar and bistro, the menu features soups, Wiener schnitzel, 120 varieties of cheese, and homemade strudels, as well as an exotic selection of milks (including horse milk and tonka bean—and geranium-flavored milks). INFO: Tel 43/1-713-3168; www.steirereck.at. Cost: dinner $115; at Meierei $25.
TRADITIONAL COFFEEHOUSES—For centuries, artists and literati have been gathering at Viennese coffeehouses to linger for hours over kaffee und kuchen (coffee and cake), while perusing racks of newspapers or engaging in (usually) friendly debate. To this day, each coffeehouse has its own personality and devoted following. One of the city’s most famous intellectual cafés remains the classic, unapologetically smoky Café Hawelka—order the signature buchteln (jam-filled dumplings). Adorning the walls are works artists used to pay their tabs. Since 1880, artists and musicians from the nearby Theater an der Wien have been regulars at cozy Café Sperl. Create your own niche and relax in a plush red-velvet window seat, while savoring the signature sausages and fabulous plum cake. At Café Central, famous at the turn of the last century for its literary patrons (Sigmund Freud and Robert Musil were regulars), vaulted ceilings and marble pillars evoke a majestic setting for apple strudel and a cup of frothy wiener mélange. At all three coffeehouses, expect superb coffee that’s dense, bitter, and fresh. CAFÉ HAWELKA: Tel 43/1-512-8230; www.hawelka.com. CAFÉ SPERL: Tel 43/1-5864158; www.cafesperl.at. CAFÉ CENTRAL: Tel 43/1-533-376-426; www.palaisevents.at.
Café Central has a long history as a favorite meeting place for Vienna intellectuals.
Winning Wines Along the Danube
THE WACHAU VALLEY
Austria
With 1,730 acres of vineyards inside the city limits, Vienna is one of the world’s most unique wine regions. But for the cream of the area’s wine-producing crop, head northwest to the Wachau Valley along the Danube. Though its grape-producing land represents a small percentage of the country’s 120,000 acres of vineyards, the region accounts for the lion’s share of top releases.
Fortified abbeys and castles crown the valley’s rolling hills, on which steeply terraced vineyards alternate with forested slopes and apricot orchards. A mild climate and the beautiful Danube have made the region ideal for vine cultivation since the Romans introduced it nearly 2,500 years ago. Towpaths along the Danube allowed horses to pull ships of wine upriver, and today cyclists pedal through wine country along one of Europe’s most beloved bike paths.
Dominating the region are family-owned operations that produce award-winning rieslings and grüner veltliners known for rich fruit flavors. Sample them in towns up and down the Danube, including Krems, Klosterneuburg, and Poysdorf. The region’s largest wine-making community, Langenlois, boasts soil honeycombed with wine caves. The city’s modern temple to wine-making is the Steven Holl-designed Loisium, a steel-clad structure that houses a hotel, wine spa, and wine-producing facilities. Guests encounter wine at every turn, with lights shaped like corks and a view of the vineyards through the hotel’s transparent ground floor.
Medieval Dürnstein may be the Wachau’s loveliest town, dominated by the hilltop ruins of 17th-century Kuenringer Castle, which are said to have inspired the magic kingdoms of the Brothers Grimm tales. Enjoy dinner and a glass of the local grüner veltliner on the terrace of the old-world Hotel Schloss Dürnstein, where many of the elegant rooms offer beautiful views of the river.
In the very center of town, the Hotel-Restaurant Sänger Blondel, a comfortable, charmingly old-fashioned guesthouse, has a good restaurant and delightful owners, who serve breakfast under the garden’s chestnut trees. Outside town, the Melk Abbey (Stift Melk), a 1,000-year-old Benedictine monastery, showcases manuscripts and precious works of art, including the famous Melk crucifix. Short boat cruises drift through this particularly picturesque, 21-mile stretch of the Danube, a lovely day trip from Vienna.
WHERE: 45 miles/73 km northwest of Vienna. LOISIUM: Tel 43/2734-771-000; www.loisiumhotel.at. Cost: from $225. HOTEL SCHLOSS DÜRNSTEIN: Tel 43/2711-212; www.schloss.at. Cost: from $305; dinner $55. When: closed Nov–early Apr. HOTEL-RESTAURANT SÄNGER BLONDEL: Tel 43/2711253; www.saengerblondel.at. Cost: from $140; dinner $30. MELK ABBEY: Tel 43/2752-555225; www.stiftmelk.at. HOW: DDSG Blue Danube offers riverboat tours. Tel 43/1-588800; www.ddsg-blue-danube.at. When: mid-Apr–Oct. BEST TIMES: early Apr for apricot blossoms; late Apr–early May for Danube Music Festival in Krems; late May for Melk Summer Festival; mid-Aug for Weissenkirchen’s Riesling festival; late Aug–Nov for grape harvest and Weinherbst, the local wine cellars’ harvest celebration.
Epicenter of Art and Fashion
THE RUBENS TRAIL
Antwerp, Belgium
A short walk through central Antwerp leads to the Rubenshuis, the mansion where Rubens lived and ran his busy workshop; several of his canvases are still on display here. For further insight into the time in which he lived, head for the Rockoxhuis. The home of one of Rubens’s wealthy patrons, Nicolaas Rockox, it is filled with furniture, paintings, and objets d’art. Rubens provided engravings for the influential printing house founded by Christophe Plantin, whose lavish home and workshops have been converted into the intriguing Museum Plantin-Moretus. The Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp) has one of the world’s largest collections of Rubens’s work, but is undergoing massive renovation until 2017, so its collections can only be glimpsed elsewhere, in temporary exhibitions.
The inspiration and sense of daring innovation that drove Rubens still ripples through Antwerp, today known for its diamond and fashion industries. It can also be witnessed in Antwerp’s most stylish small hotel, De Witte Lelie (The White Lily), which occupies an imaginatively transformed 17th-century mansion. The elegant Hotel Rubens–Grote Markt echoes the city’s historic past too and even has a rare surviving lookout tower, built in medieval times to watch out for trading ships on the River Scheldt.
Rubens lived in Rubenshuis from 1611 until his death.
WHERE: 34 miles/55 km north of Brussels. VISITOR INFO: visit.antwerpen.be. RUBENSHUIS: Tel 32/3-201-1555; www.rubenshuis.be. ROCKOXHUIS: Tel 32/3-201-9250; www.rockoxhuis.be. MUSEUM PLANTIN-MORETUS: Tel 32/3-221-1450; http://plantin-moretus.be. KMSKA: Tel 32/3-238-7809; www.kmska.be. DE WITTE LELIE: Tel 32/3-226-1966; www.dewittelelie.be. Cost: from $320. HOTEL RUBENS–GROTE MARKT: Tel 32/3-222-4848; www.hotelrubensantwerp.be. Cost: from $185 (off-peak), from $245 (peak). BEST TIMES: Jul–Aug for Zomer van Antwerpen (Summer of Antwerp) festival; Aug for the Middelheim Jazz Festival; Dec for the Christmas Market in the Grote Markt.
Heavenly Brews
BEER IN BELGIUM
Belgium
In a country barely the size of New Jersey, the breadth of Belgium’s unparalleled beer-brewing industry is astonishing. Some 125 breweries produce more than 800 varieties, including “white beers” made of wheat, stratospherically strong Bush beers, dark and winey Rodenbach, and the famous Trappist beers brewed for centuries under the watchful eyes of monks and, no doubt, St. Arnold, Belgium’s own patron saint of beer.
The Abbaye d’Orval is one of the country’s five Trappist breweries. Set in the forested hills of the Ardennes region, 100 miles south of Brussels, its ruins date to 1110; other buildings date to the 17th century. A community of monks carefully tends the beautiful grounds, medicinal herb garden, and dispensary, where the famous Orval beer is sold along with artisanal bread and cheese.
Belgium’s Trappist breweries, and many of its other breweries, are not generally open to the public. One happy exception, halfway between the Abbaye d’Orval and Brussels, is the little Brasserie du Bocq. Founded in 1858 and still operated by the Belot family, it produces 10 varieties of beer. Another accessible brewery is in Bruges (see next page): De Halve Maan (The Half Moon) has been making beer since 1856; today it turns out two excellent varieties that pack a punch, Brugse Zot (6 percent ABV) and Straffe Hendrik (9 percent ABV).
Brussels lies in the Valley of the Senne, where an unusual wild, air-borne yeast called brettanomyces is found. This is the secret of the unique beers of Brussels called lambic: The warm brew is placed in copper basins open to the air, and the yeast does its work. Lambic is blended and matured to create gueuze, mixed with cherry juice to make kriek, and with caramelized sugar to make faro—all classic Brussels beers. You can see these processes at the atmospheric Cantillon Brewery, which doubles as the Musée Bruxellois de la Gueuze, located in the Brussels suburb of Anderlecht.
For a good variety of beer in Brussels, ask anyone for directions to the celebrated tavern La Fleur en Papier Doré, just a 5-minute walk from the Grand Place, in the Rue des Alexiens. It was a favorite haunt of the surrealists, including René Magritte. Order some tasty, traditional bruxellois bar food, such as pottekeis (light cheese spread) and bloempanch (blood sausage), and a few brews and you’ve got yourself a quintessential Belgian meal.
Trappist monks run the historic Orval church and brewery.
ABBAYE D’ORVAL: Tel 32/61-31-1261; www.orval.be. WHERE TO STAY: Auberge du Moulin Hideux, a refined country inn housed in a 17th-century mill, is 20 minutes from Orval. Tel 32/61-46-7015; www.moulinhideux.be. Cost: from $280; dinner $100. BRASSERIE DU BOCQ: Tel 32/82-61-0780; www.bocq.be. DE HALVE MAAN: Tel 32/50-44-4222; www.halvemaan.be. MUSÉE BRUXELLOIS DE LA GUEUZE: Tel 32/2-521-4928; www.cantillon.be. LA FLEUR EN PAPIER DORÉ: 32/2-511-1659; www.lafleurenpapierdore.be. Cost: lunch $20. BEST TIME: early Sep for Brussels Belgian Beer Weekend, when some 50 breweries show off their products.
A Medieval Moment Captured in Time
BRUGES
Belgium
Bruges, or Brugge, is a perfectly formed city in miniature, brimming with reminders of its age of glory in medieval times. It’s the kind of place that’s easy to explore on foot. Better still, take a tour in an open boat on the meandering, willow-lined canals, to learn how Bruges was once linked to the world beyond and why it is called the “Venice of the North.”
This was once one of Europe’s most prosperous cities, the 15th-century capital of the Dukes of Burgundy, and a busy trading hub where Italian bankers rubbed shoulders with merchants from Spain, England, and Scandinavia. Then, in the early 16th century, political power shifted away, the canals silted up, and Bruges fell into a long decline until it was rediscovered more than 300 years later.
The riches of Bruges’s golden age become vividly clear at the city’s small but exquisite Groeninge Museum. When Jan van Eyck painted his Virgin with Canon Joris van der Paele in 1436, he was depicting not just a sacred scene but also the kind of luxuries and supreme craftsmanship that surrounded him: the sumptuous textiles, the gemstones, the finely tooled armor. In a similar vein, the German-born and prolific local master Hans Memling painted six works of jewel-like precision for the chapel of Sint-Janshospitaal, the medieval hospital where they can still be seen.
Day-trippers flock to Bruges from Brussels to swarm around its medieval landmarks: the towering town belfry, the 14th-century Gothic Stadhuis (town hall), the Onthaalkerk Onze-Lieve-Vrouw (Church of Our Lady) with its white marble Madonna and Child by Michelangelo, and the 13th-century Begijnhof, a self-contained conventlike community that flourished for 600 years and remains a world apart. Linger overnight at the Prinsenhof, one of Bruges’s many supremely comfortable hotels, this one housed in a 20th-century mansion. Or try the family-owned Alegria, a small and stylish central inn. Cozy bistros serving the regional favorite of moules-frites (mussels and fries) are plentiful; for a sampling from the new guard, try Restaurant Patrick Devos, where a centuries-old house is the elegant setting for first-class French cuisine cooked with a Belgian twist. Then take a stroll to the city’s central square, the Burg, glorious when illuminated at night.
Canals still flow throughout Bruges, which has retained much of its medieval architecture.
WHERE: 62 miles/100 km northwest of Brussels. VISITOR INFO: www.brugge.be. GROENINGE MUSEUM AND MEMLING IN SINT-JAN: Tel 32/50-44
-8743; www.brugge.be. PRINSENHOF: Tel 32/50-34-2690; www.prinsenhof.com. Cost: from $245. ALEGRIA: Tel: 32/50-33-0937; www.alegria-hotel.com. Cost: from $135. RESTAURANT PATRICK DEVOS: Tel 32/50-33-5566; www.patrickdevos.be. Cost: dinner $80. BEST TIMES: Mar–Nov for boat tours; May for Procession of the Holy Blood on Ascension Day (40 days after Easter); Aug for Klinkers music festival.
A Connoisseur’s Nirvana
BELGIAN CHOCOLATE
Brussels, Belgium
Stand outside the Leonidas shop on the Boulevard Anspach—one of the 22 Brussels outlets of this leading Belgian manufacturer—and you might think it was fast food it was selling, not luxury chocolates. But the reason the crowds gather is for the assortments of pralines (filled chocolates): Wrapped in a small, gilded treasure box called a ballotin, they make for a perfect gift, everyone’s first-choice souvenir to take home. Once an indulgence of the rich, Belgian chocolate is now a favorite of the masses.
The high quality of Belgian chocolate has to do with both the raw materials used to make it and the method by which it is made. It has high levels of cocoa solids and cocoa butter and is subjected to long and intense processing. For a more detailed explanation of what makes Belgian chocolate so wonderful, visit the Musée du Cacao et du Chocolat (the chocolate museum), close to the Grand Place.
Brussels claims to be the birthplace, in 1912, of the praline—the triumph of Jean Neuhaus, who sold his confections in the Galeries Royales St-Hubert, the elegant 19th-century shopping arcade near the Grand Place. Neuhaus is now another leading brand of Belgian luxury chocolates; the third may be the most recognizable—Godiva, founded in 1926.
1,000 Places to See Before You Die Page 16