Vienna: Day Two: Schoenbrunn, the zoo, and midnight runabouts

(Written on July 4th 2009)

The second day I was in Vienna, I woke up early. This was followed by a nice breakfast of fresh rolls, cheese and cold cuts (SWINE!). After washing the aforementioned breakfast foods down with about a liter of Austrian coffee, we (Ka, I, and Livia) took off to visit Shoenbrunn.

Schoennbrunn is the name of the 'summerhouse' of the von Hapsburgs. It is a palace and estate that it slightly outside of Vienna's 'inner city', though still well within the city limits. The grounds and mansion themselves are just another testimony to the flair for grandeur that the von Hapsburgs had. Fountains, gardens and fabulous architecture abound in this place. If I was going to have a summer house built, this would be it. The Roman-style fountains and Barouqe gardens were particularly wonderful.

One of the very cool things about it (besides the Romanesque fountains and statuary), is the zoo. Yes! You heard me correctly, I said zoo!(It is also the worlds oldest zoo, dating back to the mid 1700's It was a little small (as zoos go), but the habitats were very nice, tidy, and quite convincing (to me anyway, maybe the opinions of the animals differ). exhibits of note: The tigers! The bat room, boars and praying mantises. It was all quite cool, Thanks Ka!

When we came back from ShoenenBrunnen, we went directly into the heart of the 'inner-city'. This was nice! We visited Stephan's place (very famous church). It was gorgeous. We even went inside and I got to take some really great pictures of the inside of the place (hope I don't go to hell for that). We also visited a bunch of other great buildings, churches and fountains in town while we were there. Again, I will choose to show you in picture albums rather than futility try to capture it with unwieldy words.