{"id":694,"date":"2011-04-28T10:22:28","date_gmt":"2011-04-28T15:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/?p=694"},"modified":"2011-04-28T10:32:33","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T15:32:33","slug":"day-04-vienna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/?p=694","title":{"rendered":"Day 04 – Vienna"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday! For our first (and only) full day in Vienna, we decided that seeing the palace was a good idea. We managed to get there after taking the Vienna subway a few stops. The main palace courtyard had an Easter Market, so we took a little time to wander through that. The zoo was going to be our main attraction, but we walked around the grounds a bit first. We went in winter and it was neat, but now it’s summer and they’ve got everything planted with flowers.<\/p>\n

\"Flowers\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Red<\/a><\/p>\n

The fountains were also filled and turned on in most places, so we stopped for a bit to admire them.<\/p>\n

\"Fountain\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We lucked out with having nothing but bright, beautiful weather the entire trip.<\/p>\n

\"Nice<\/a><\/p>\n

We got into the zoo and took almost the same path we took the last time we were there<\/a>. There were a few differences with the summer. That peacock we saw last time was sitting on the top of the owl’s cage cawing like a madman. That stupid red panda from last time was asleep, so I finally got a decent picture of it.<\/p>\n

\"Red<\/a><\/p>\n

We saw the penguins again, but this time our friend the sea lion wasn’t around and his pool was drained. We did catch the elephants outside though. The little baby is cute, in a butt ugly sort of way.<\/p>\n

\"Baby<\/a><\/p>\n

The whole elephant family was running around, so we got some pics and video.<\/p>\n

\"Elephant<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

We took a little break in the elephant building (of which there were no elephants – they were all outside), then moved on to the bird buildings.<\/p>\n

\"Dennis<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m not sure what they feed the animals there, but some act awfully strange.<\/p>\n

\"Bird\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We were pretty close to the sloth area again, so we popped in just to see if he was doing anything this time. Lo and behold, he was hanging around eating some lunch! We actually got to see the sloth do something! Joni was particularly pleased.<\/p>\n

\"Sloth\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When we left the sloth building, we caught the lemurs outside on a little island. There were foraging for food, but one seemed to be on guard duty as he was watching a duck really<\/em> intently.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

We moved on and saw the giraffes, hippo, and the hit up the panda. We went into the panda building for a bit to watch them eat. it was crowded so we didn’t get a good view. We went back outside, then discovered one of the pandas chilling out having lunch in the sun. He looked pretty relaxed.<\/p>\n

\"Panda\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By this time we were getting pretty hungry, so we stopped into the big restaurant and had lunch. It was the same place we ate last time. It was still good, but the food was more expensive… no doubt a side effect of having so many more people at the zoo. Stupid economics.<\/p>\n

After lunch we went over to the orangutans. We didn’t have much luck seeing one last time, but on this day they were out and about.<\/p>\n

\"Orangutang\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

It was very bright, so Joni devised her own improvised hat using the zoo map.<\/p>\n

\"Joni\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Once we had our fill of orangutans… wait, that doesn’t sound right. Once we had seen<\/em> as much as we wanted, we went back into the main part of the zoo and gawked at the tortoises.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

They really are cute. As Joni says in the video, we need to get them some mashed potatoes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since we were at the reptile house anyway, we went inside to see the lizards and whatnot. They also have fish in there. The piranhas are particularly cute. I managed to snag some video of the jellyfish. No small feat since it’s pitch black in there and kids love to crowd around them.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

With the jelly fish and scary fish out of the way, we went over to the big cats area. There were some cats playing, but most were sleeping. Cheetahs are surprisingly cute when they’re sleeping.<\/p>\n

\"Cheetah<\/a><\/p>\n

They’re even cuter once you see that they sleep like dogs!<\/p>\n

\"Cheetah<\/a><\/p>\n

The day was coming to a close at this point, so we quickly went back up toward the penguin area. We found the sea lions in a little side pool. They were actually in the process of refilling their main pool. We also discovered that the polar bear was out and about. He was playing with\/try to eat a large plastic jug.<\/p>\n

\"Polar<\/a><\/p>\n

Right next to the polar bear I found this thing.<\/p>\n

\"Thing\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think it’s called a “cabera” or something, but I’m honestly just too lazy to look it up! Exercise for the reader.<\/p>\n

We continued on and saw random animals. We did see the rhino again. I think we got another picture of its butt. We also saw this little guy:<\/p>\n

\"Litte<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the more disturbing animals was the giant ant eater. First, I didn’t realize this, but those things have big fluffy tails, kind of what I’d expect to see on a peacock or pheasant or something. They look out of place on a land animal. Their actions are no goofier. We found two in their little area. One was laying on the ground, the other was standing over it, and they were making out. No kidding. It was disgusting.<\/p>\n

So of course I took video. Creepy, dirty video.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

The last event at the zoo was by far the most important. Remember that digger I found back when we visited in Winter? The one that wasn’t running… because it was Winter? Well, it wasn’t Winter anymore. We stopped into the play area and found the diggers. Turns out it costs a Euro to use one, so I shoved some kids off it and started it up!<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

One child protested that it was “for children”, but I would have none of that. It was my time and I used all of it. I have no regrets.<\/p>\n

We left the zoo and decided to walk up to the big gate\/house\/overlook thingy at the top of the hill. Once we got up there, we decided to pay the 10 Euro to climb to the top of the structure. It was a decent view.<\/p>\n

\"Top<\/a><\/p>\n

We were all beat by this point, so we went back to the hostel. We were also hungry, so we went back to Mariahilferbr\u00e4u and had supper there again. Again, wonderful. EAT THERE.<\/p>\n

We came back to the hostel and played some cards before hitting the sack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday! For our first (and only) full day in Vienna, we decided that seeing the palace was a good idea. We managed to get there after taking the Vienna subway a few stops. The main palace courtyard had an Easter Market, so we took a little time to wander through that. The zoo was going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-austria","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maryjoandwill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}