When we asked around for Vienna sightseeing recommendations, friends suggested Schönbrunn Palace just outside the city center. This former home of the Habsburg Imperial family is often dubbed "mini Versailles." The grounds include gardens and the oldest zoo in the world complete with original cages from the Empire. I've yet to take Jude to the Amsterdam Zoo due to the 20 euro price tag and not knowing how much he would enjoy it at this age. A wintertime special including entrance to the Schönbrunn Palace and the zoo was 22.50 euro. I was sold. Friday was forecasted to be the warmest day of our 4 day trip to Vienna so I opted to head straight there with Jude while Pete's conference got underway.
The grand tour included in the ticket gave access to 40 rooms of the palace including the apartments and grand halls. No photography was allowed, but the highlights were the the room where Mozart first played for the Emperor at the tender age of 6 and the ballroom, which was used as the meeting place of JFK and the Soviet leader Khrushchev in 1961.
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| My travel buddy is cocooned in their somewhere! |
After the tour and stroll through the gardens, we made our way to the zoo. It was blustery out, but there were many indoor exhibits including an aquarium, penguin house, monkey house, Tropical Rain Forrest, and Koala house. Jude was most captivated by the panda bears, monkeys, swimming penguins, fish and polar bears. It was very quiet at the zoo given the weather so we could really get up close and personal with the animals without the crowds.
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| The World's oldest zoo as Jude's first zoo experience, not too shabby! |
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| Is that all you got, monkeys? |
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| Someone needs to inform PETA of the penguins in fur!! |
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| Of course, I was excited to see the polar bears (my college mascot)- Go U Bears! |
The funniest encounter of the day was with an older zoo volunteer. I was looking for an indoor restaurant to get out of the cold and have lunch with Jude. The only place that I saw was the central pavilion that, while beautiful, could only be accessed by large staircases. So I stopped this woman whose English was practically non-existent and asked if there were any other indoor restaurants at the zoo. For reference, I pointed over the flamingos to the central pavilion. She got excited and told me to follow her to the aquarium. The whole while, I was wondering if she understood me correctly because the map didn't show any food near there. We enter the aquarium, go through the maze-like exhibit, pop behind a secluded wall and boom- there was a whole other species of beautiful flamingos :) She beamed from ear to ear and told us "here it is!" I thanked her politely, admire the beauties and then pulled out the map and made my own way to another restaurant. I would never have found those flamingos on my own so I really was happy for the misunderstanding!
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| New flamingo friends! |
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