Next in our series of city cards I’ve actually used, let’s check out the Vienna Pass card.

Things I love about city cards:

• Makes narrowing down what to do easier.
• Helps you budget your attraction spending in advance.
• Lets you pay off a lot of your attraction spending before even going on vacation.
• They often have travel cards (subways, busses, etc.) built in or the option to add them.

Things I don’t always love about city cards:

• Sometimes they’re more of a discount card than an admission card.
• Sometimes they have lousy attractions (I’m looking at you, Amsterdam Card).
• Sometimes you can get the same discounts for free with a few coupons or a stop at the local Travel Center.
• They can feel limiting.

At the end of the day, I always at least check out the card. I’m a little lazy, so some guidance on where to go and what to do never hurts.

Some cities, like London, have phenomenal cards. Like – if you want to dawn till dusk it and hit all the major tourist spots, the London card is the way to save some money.

Some cities have less robust cards.

I also like that if the weather is crappy or you need to pivot in your plans, you can just check out what other things you can still do for free (or discounted) with your card and just keep moving, rather than having to go back to the research drawing board or spend a ton of money on a sudden new plan.

In our recent Eastern European trip, my cousin and I went to Prague (check out that card review here), Budapest, and Vienna. Vienna wound up being the most expensive stop on our trip due to it actually being a larger, metropolitan city and the use of the Euro there.

Not to say Budapest or Prague aren’t large and metropolitan, but they’re not quite as large or metropolitan. They both felt like we were in Eastern Europe. Vienna honestly felt more like a very clean and polite New York City or London.

The Vienna Pass comes with a Travelcard option. It is not valid from the airport to the city center, but you can otherwise use it throughout town. Vienna’s public transport also operates on an honor system, so no one will really be double checking that you’re actually buying tickets, but as a person who tries to have some honor sometimes, I was happy we had the pass.

The public transport is really easy to use and easy to navigate. The feminist in me also loved that the stickers asking people to give up their seats were in both genders, including men holding small children.

The Vienna Pass covers a lot of the biggest tourist attractions in Vienna including the Schonbrunn Palace, Hofburg Palace, and Danube Tower.

Here’s a breakdown of what we saw over three days from the pass:

• Spanish Riding School Morning Exercises – €15,00
• Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel – €12,00
• Apple Strudel Show – €6,50
• Otto Wagner Pavilion (Karlsplatz) – €5,00
• Schlumberger Cellars – €11,00
• Schonbrunn Palace Grand Tour – €20,00
• Danube Park Miniature Railway – €4,00
• Hofburg Imperial Palace – €15,00
• House of Music – €13,00
• Imperial Carriage Museum – €9,50
• Mozarthaus Vienna – €11,00
• Danube Tower – €14,50
• Vienna 72 Hour Travel Card – €17,10

Total Cost: €153,60

3 Day Vienna Card – €125,00

Savings = €28,60

We also chose to do a few things that weren’t on the card, so you could theoretically opt to do more activities on the card and save even more.

Some additional things we did that we highly recommend though include:

Going to the opera. I mean, if you hate opera, you probably won’t like this opera any more than others, but if you like opera at all or are curious, the Vienna State Opera is really one of the best in the world.

If you’re unsure about how much you want to commit, you can try to get standing room only tickets – which kind of suck, cause you’re going to stand for like three hours, but only cost 3 to 4 Euros and they go on sale 80 minutes before a performance starts at the box office. You probably want to show up about 2 hours before the performance though to actually get tickets.

And, if you find you hate the opera, you can always leave during one of the intermissions and you’ve only spent 3 to 4 Euros.

Sacher Torte. This cake originates from Vienna and they serve it at the Sacher Hotel right behind the opera and it is ridiculously decadent. To be fair, there are lots of strangely decadent cake and bakery shops all over Vienna.

Viator day tour to Seagrotte. I love me some Viator tour, though this was probably the least impressive I’ve been on. The tour guide was really good and it was nice to get out of the city and see a few other areas. We went to a monastery, an underground river in a cave (Seagrotte), and Mayerling, a convent that used to be a country home to some of the Viennese royalty.

Overall, I’d say the Vienna Pass can definitely save you some money and will help you hit all the major tourist spots in the city.

Have you ever been to Vienna? What was your favorite thing to see there?