Rathausplatz is the prettiest, but Spittelberg is the one you go back to.
Most Slovak trips to the Vienna Christmas markets last one day: leave in the morning, return at night, seven hours on a coach and four hours on Rathausplatz. For 189 EUR we give you three days and six markets, three of which the locals actually use.
Rathausplatz is the biggest and the prettiest, with a fifteen metre tree and stalls arranged like a maze. It also has the most people, and punch there costs 5.50 EUR. Spittelberg is the opposite: narrow lanes of Biedermeier houses, craft stalls and far fewer crowds. Karlsplatz is for families, with live animals. Freyung is the oldest market in the city and sells things you would genuinely buy.
We stay near Westbahnhof, ten minutes by metro from the centre and forty euros a night cheaper than a hotel in the first district. The schedule is loose: our guide Jana takes you to an agreed market each morning and the afternoons are yours. One day we go to Schönbrunn, where the market sits in front of the palace and the gardens are empty in winter, which is a relief. Café Central has a queue you cannot beat, so bring patience or go to Café Sperl, which is the same thing without the wait. Skip the Sacher torte. It is dry. We said it. Three days is the right length for Vienna: enough to see the markets without having to choose between them. The coach leaves Turzovka in the morning and you are home on Sunday evening, so you take one day off work, if that. Children under twelve get a discount, and Karlsplatz has a separate market built for them, with craft workshops.
We leave Turzovka at 7:00 and the drive takes four and a half hours including a break. Check in at half past twelve. In the afternoon we walk the old centre: Stephansdom, the Graben and the Hofburg. In the early evening, the Rathausplatz market as the lights come on. Punch costs 5.50 EUR plus a deposit on the mug.
Schönbrunn palace in the morning; the tour of twenty two rooms takes an hour. The market sits right in front of it, smaller but with better mulled wine. The afternoon is free for shopping. In the early evening, Spittelberg, where the stalls sell crafts rather than plastic.
Breakfast, check out, bags left on the coach. The morning covers the Freyung and Am Hof markets, which sit next to each other and are the oldest in the city. Lunch and coffee at Café Sperl. We leave at 15:00 and are back in Turzovka around half past seven in the evening.
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