No Words.

Roving.

A Central Experience.

A rarity: Café Central with no line.

Vienna, Austria – Café Central’s not the sort of place I typically visit.

Too many tourists gawking at overpriced pastries and vaulted ceilings, wanting to be part of an approximated history that’s been written here. Or nearly here.

But the traditional Viennese café is such an important part of the city’s mystique that I’ve been the tourist I am and come for breakfast and a Melange. In a nod to traditional etiquette, a spoon is placed upside down atop the glass of water set alongside my coffee.

While the café is in a different part of the building than when it opened in 1876, it maintains a sense of charm and gravitas. Gone is the thinker’s salon known for epic battles of chess and heated discussions of the day’s politics.

Instead, social media influencers pose in front of glass cases filled with ornately decorated patisseries.

At one time, you’d have found the psychologist Freud, the artist Klimt, the architect Loos and countless writers spread across the café, poring over newspapers and writing their next oeuvres.

You may have also shared a table with Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin or Hitler.

They’re obviously name-dropped less.

History is fluid. A cultural touchstone like Café Central still sets the scene, allowing you to connect to a different time and to imagine the electricity of thought that filled the hall.

The reality that it was originally located a few feet away changes little.

Habs(burgs) and Hab Nots.

Life's a ball in Kugelmugel.

Vienna, Austria – Scale.

It’s the first word that comes to mind to describe Vienna.

Not necessarily the size of the city itself – although my legs may argue after another 30-kilometre day – but everything feels massive. The Hofburg Imperial Palace, St. Stephen's Cathedral and Vienna State Opera may not be the world's largest on their own, but taken collectively, they lend the city a certain weight.

It pays to have a dynasty – and a sense of self-importance. 

There remains a symbolic and very real presence of the Habsburg monarchy, even today. Marble. Spires. Fountains. Sculptures. Blocks of perfectly shaped buildings in neutral tones, like delicately piped cakes.

As important to Viennese culture as opera.

Horse-drawn carriages clop through Michaelerplatz, the centre of city life since 1 AD. There’s so much history sculpted into these buildings and fountains, each of which burbles with its own stories.

I've spent the day wandering through and around the old town, gawking at the views, each of which seemed to surpass the last.

(And sipped Viennese coffee on Stephanplatz, as people have for centuries.)

Across the city: the opposite end of the spectrum. An orange sphere is tucked behind an eight-foot-tall barbed wire fence in the Prater amusement park. It appears to make an surprised face. Welcome to the Republic of Kugelmugel, a self-described 'micronation' built in the 1970s as a piece of protest art.

It's a far cry from the types of pageantry you'd see at balls elsewhere in Vienna.

The Golden Hour.

A golden kiss.

Vienna, Austria – Centuries-old gardens are finely trimmed into pointy finials.

A robot mows the lawn in zig-zags.

The anachronism momentarily breaks my reverie about how generations of royalty lived at Belvedere Palace. I’ve sat here an hour, absorbing the sun, the largesse, the detail.

Nearly a kilometre long, the Baroque gardens slope toward the old town, connecting Upper and Lower Belvedere. Spray from tiers of fountains sparkles like diamonds, falling into the outstretched hands of ornately carved marble cherubs.

It’s refreshing in the heat.

Historically, people cooled off in the towering, reddish-brown – and aptly named – Marble Hall, found inside Upper Belvedere. Topped by a massive fresco painted in 1721, it's also where the Austrian State Treaty was signed in 1955, re-establishing the country's sovereignty.

The remaining rooms are filled with priceless masterworks – it has been a day of art. Rodin. van Gogh. Munch. Schiele. And the world’s largest collection of Klimt.

As I make my way through the crowd, newlyweds and lovers cluster, arm-in-arm, in front of his most famous.

The Kiss.