If you could visit just one place in a great city, where would you go? The Eiffel Tower or the Louvre in Paris? The Statue of Liberty or Central Park in New York? Tiananmen Square or the Forbidden City in Beijing?

I have answers for three cities we just visited along the Danube River: Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava. My picks aren’t necessarily the most famous spots in these cities but they’re the ones Champa and I will remember the most. 

In Vienna, it was the opera house. Not inside the opera, where two tickets can cost more than our monthly Peace Corps budget, but the sidewalk outside. You can sit in chairs there and watch a performance live on a giant screen for free. We discovered this after we arrived in Vienna and saw the ballet Raymonda starting as we strolled by. We sat and enjoyed it for nearly an hour, returning the next day to catch part of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre.

It was magical to sit outside on a beautiful evening and watch world-class performances in the Austrian city reknown for its music and culture.

In Budapest, we’ll most remember the Chain Bridge and adjacent funicular, which provide stunning views of a picturesque city. We’d already taken a boat ride down the Danube, sailing under the bridge and past the Parliament building and other sites. As in Vienna, we’d also toured the city with Big Bus.

However, nothing topped the view from the historic bridge that spans the river between Buda and Pest, the western and eastern sides of Hungary’s capital. Well, nothing except the historic cable car that climbs to an even better view from Buda Castle. 

Our biggest Bratislava memory will be St. Martin’s Cathedral, and not only because it’s a landmark of the Slovakian capital. For us, it was also the view in the window of the Airbnb we rented across the square. We could admire the three-nave Gothic church while sipping our morning coffee and then walk a few steps to tour the interior.

A sidewalk, a bridge and a cathedral weren’t the only places we enjoyed during our eight-day trip, the last vacation of our Peace Corps service. We saw lots of other things, too. Some were surprising, as I’ll explain in my next post. For now, you can see for yourself that many of them were amazing.

Vienna, Austria:

Budapest, Hungary:

Bratislava, Slovakia: