Vienna

Vienna runs on café marble and a waltz the city never quite finished: an imperial capital that kept the orchestra after losing the empire, and decided the good life would be its consolation and its revenge. The coffee house here is a legislated way of being — one coffee, one marble table, three newspapers, no hurry — and the opera sells standing room nightly for the price of a pastry.

The sensible traveller circles the Ring by tram once to review the empire's façade collection; queues the hour for Klimt's gold at the Belvedere or books the Kunsthistorisches' Bruegel room instead; and does Schönbrunn's gardens in the morning before the palace corridors clot. The fourth day problem — Vienna rewards it — belongs to the heurigen: wine taverns in the vineyard villages inside the city limits, spritzers under chestnut trees.

The Guide's honesty: the waiter's formality is the service, not its absence — order decisively and the marble is yours for hours —; standing-room opera queues form early and reward the punctual with Puccini for pocket change; and the Sachertorte argument between two hotels is settled privately: both, one per day.