500 meters above sea level, the town of Bled is a scenic alpine resort in northwestern Slovenia. Bled is perhaps best known for Lake Bled (Blejsko jezero in Slovene, Veldeser See in German) a 2,120 m long and 1,380 m wide lake surrounded by mountains and forests. The lake surrounds Bled Island (Blejski otok), home of the Assumption of Mary Pilgrimage Church, a popular tourist destination where visitors ring the church bells for good luck.
Bled Castle (Blejski grad), perched on a 130 m cliff overlooking Lake Bled, is …

One block from Carnegie Hall in New York, just visited by the Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic), is the Seasonal Restaurant & Weinbar.  Seasonal provides a year-round taste of Vienna and is representative of the new generation of Viennese restaurants in Austria and elsewhere that have moved away from the formal, dark, and gilded Habsburg era style to elegant and casual dining.
There is ample reason to go to Seasonal for the food alone but diners should be aware of the unparalleled cellar of Austrian and German wines that co-owners Wolfgang Ban …

The Wiener Philharmoniker (as the Vienna Philharmonic prefers to be called), leveraging a native relationship to the Second Viennese School of music, brought along challenging and thought-provoking pieces by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern as it arrived at Carnegie Hall this past Friday.
The ensemble was in New York a bit earlier than usual for its annual three-concert series just a few weeks after its New Year’s Day concert in Vienna, one of the music world’s biggest annual events.  The format of the New Year’s Day concert is nothing if not …

Vienna, once the capital of an empire of which it was said that the sun never set over it, is now equally as important as the capital of a newly-invigorated Central Europe that bridges East with West.
Spending summer and winter in Vienna, one notices an entirely different, but equally vibrant, energy.  I’ve been spending time each year in Vienna since my youth.  In 2008, I was in Vienna for a week in June during the Euro 2008 football championship.  At the beginning of last year I returned to attend the …

A twisty drive on the Alpenstraße brings the visitor to Le Ciel, a 12-table restaurant that offers dining at an altitude of 1000 meters at the InterContinental Resort Berchtesgaden.  The hotel itself is set on a small plateau overlooking the Nationalpark Berchtesgaden in Berchtesgadener Land, Bayern (Bavaria) adjacent to Salzburg, Austria.
On Christmas Day it had started to snow in the late afternoon and the restaurant’s softly lighted interior seemed all the more inviting, the quiet elegance of the place adding a festive note to the visit.
The atmosphere reflects the passion …

Just as those of many business travelers, my typical trips are several days long. Fly out, have a day or two of meetings, and return. When it comes to longer trips, especially those mixing business and pleasure, I find that I need to plan my packing strategy far more carefully. And when the trip is in the middle of the holiday season, even more care is required.
Choosing the right luggage is key. In recent years, I’ve settled on several different bags from Tumi, including the Tumi …

The institution of the Kaffeehaus, or coffeehouse, is one of the most democratic public places ever invented.  Similar to the Melange, the most popular kind of coffee in Vienna, the Kaffeehaus offers a mélange of people of all social classes who come together to sit, read, write, and talk – all for the price of a cup of coffee.   Indeed, a guest who orders one coffee can sit for hours at a time reading the newspapers, typically plentiful in a Kaffeehaus and found in special wooden holders that facilitate one-handed …

A pleasant 40 km (25 mile) drive along the Hudson takes one from midtown Manhattan to the town of Piermont in the Hudson River Valley, where chef and owner Peter X. Kelly offers a seasonal menu that is worth the drive from anywhere in the Northeast.
The elegant restaurant, which seats 40, is small and cozy.  The dining room is festive with crystal chandeliers, flowers everywhere, and soft cream colored walls.
Service is superb with great attention to detail, yet it is also unpretentious and friendly.  I was there for a private …

Vienna, at the heart of Europe, is a city offering a unique blend of the arts, culture, music, and shopping, where 19th century Imperial traditions coexist alongside the latest trends.  One doesn’t have to go far to see a Fiaker (horse-drawn carriage) being passed by a skateboarder.
Tradition is everywhere, from the Kaffeehaus (coffee house) to ubiquitous paintings and photographs of Kaiser Franz Joseph I., the Habsburg emperor who ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1848 to 1916.
Vienna is one of the only cities in the world with its own cuisine (most …

The Wachau is an area of Austria that I have visited regularly since childhood.  It is a valley that runs along the Danube river for 33 km from Melk to Krems but today is the first time I viewed it from the Danube itself.  I left Krems on the Austria, one of several vessels from Brandner that run along the river and disembarked in Weißenkirchen one hour later.
A short walk along the Wachaustraße took us to the the main retail location for Wieser, a purveyor of local apricot marmalade (Marillenmarmalade) …