It has been a while since I wrote about travelling. Now I want to write something about place of interest to visit in Austria and it will be related with nature.

Today I would like to introduce one of the largest lake in Austria. It calls Neusiedler See (See means lake in Deutsch). It is located in Burgenland. It will take around 50 minutes to 1 hour driving from Vienna. On the way to this lake, you can see so many grape plantations around you cause Burgenland is famous as wine producing area in Austria. This lake is surrounded with beautiful nature and also wine producing villages. It is also one of UNESCO´s World Heritage. Half part of this area is a natural park which is not exploited in any way, the other part is a conservation area which depends on human care.

This Neusiedler See is about 315 km2 and a small part of it is located in Hungary. The best way to reach this place is by car. You can reach this place also by train, there are some train stations in the surrounding villages, but you still need a car to bicycle to explore the lake, so I suggest you to take your bike or rent it. We visited this lake at April 2017, and we stayed at a hotel in Frauenkirchen. You can find several hotels also in Podernsdorf am See. If you stay in Podernsdorf, you can directly go to the lake. Since we came in April, there was no charge to enter the lake, but I see price list and ticket locket at the front of the lake, so I think that you should pay to enter the lake in summer.

We visit the lake in Illmitz and Podernsdorf.  Both of them have playgrounds for children, but in Podernsdorf, you have to pay to play in some playgrounds. You can find restaurants in both of those places, but you will find more restaurants and also convenient stores in Podernsdorf because it is a tourism area, and Illmitz is more nature.

This is how the lake looks like from Podernsdorf. It was a bit cloudy when we arrived there, but still it was beautiful to be seen. If you like to have some water sports or you would like to rent some boats, it´s better to visit Podernsdorf. The children will love this place because it has playground and they can play water or swim also in summer.

In Illmitz, you can see the conservation area and more than 340 species of birds. If you like to see birds, I suggest you to take your telescope or binoculars with you. It is really a paradise of birds. Unluckily, we don´t see to much of it since it was a bit cloudy and raining. We didn´t bring any telescope or binoculars either. The wind is a bit strong in April, so you have to take your windbreak jacket also. If you want to introduce nature to your children, Illmitz is the best place to visit. You can found meadow in this area. I think summer is the best time to visit the national park, so that you can see a lot of variety of birds and the other animals. But i see in the brochure, there are also various different kind of animals which you can see through all of the seasons. There are also some tours to explore the nature in this area, but we didn´t take any of it because we didn´t knew where the office to book some tours was. This is how nature in Illmitz looks like.

Beside nature, you can also visit another point of interest, such as Barock Schloss or Schloss Halbturn in the Halbturn. This is a summer resident for the emperor and also a place for hunting.  It has a large garden and also restaurant in it. Here are some pictures of the palace.

We also visited the zoo nearby Illmitz. The zoo is not a modern one, but close to nature itself. If you want to visit the zoo and also Barock Schloss, the best way is driving, without a car, those places are a bit hard to reach. What I like the most from our journey to this place last year was we were so close to the nature and our daily life. It was like entering a really new surrounding for us and it was fun, no buildings around us, just nature. We can also introduce to our daughter what nature really looks like so that she knows that there are some parts of the world which are free from buildings. She is also able to see the animals in its own habitat.

I will write more beautiful places that we have visited in Austria in my next blog. I hope you all enjoy the photos 🙂