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Published: December 21st 2006
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Fried Apple
Dave eating his apple fritter on the way to the zoo Tuesday Dec 12th
It was a relatively nice day in Vienna.. still freezing cold..but it looked like the sun was making a genuine attempt at gracing us with her presence..so we decided to take a stroll towards the Schonbrunn Castle. We had heard that there was a garden maze, a zoo, and the old faithful- a Christmas market within the castle...
Armed with the GPS we hit the streets of Vienna. The walk was supposed to be an easy 15-20 min walk..after about an hour and 15 mins we saw the grand doors of the castle 😊 Although the walk took longer than accepted, the GPS did not fail us a bit and it actually was a very nice walk in new neighborhoods.
The Schonbrunn Castle looked impressive from the courtyard.. and we made a mental note to come back on a different day to explore it in more detail.. But for today we decided to go check out the animules since it had the least tourist attention.. (on the way to the zoo we gave into the temptation of the battered, fried apple..aka an apple fritter, fired grease never tasted so good!!!)
The Schonbrunn zoo didn’t look
Jaguar and the poor bunny
That bunny was alive and hoppin few hours ago.. very impressive from outside.. But boy were we wrong! And sure enough there were only a handful of tourists and some school kids... so we managed to navigate around without constantly bumping into people. (It’s pretty funny how much we are turned off by tourists.. When that’s exactly what we are..)
The animal habitats in the zoo were pretty amazing. I had never seen a Kuala bear so close or seen a Jaguar tear a whole rabbit apart..with the guts out and all.. We were lucky enough to catch some of the animals during their feeding time. Apparently in Vienna they cut off the heads of the rabbits and throw the rest to the tigers and jaguars and you can stand there and watch them feast.. made me nauseous but David was cherishing every moment.. surprise.. surprise..
The zoo had just about any animal we could think of.. And some that we couldn’t even name or recognize (all the signs were in German..we should’ve taken a pocket translator). We saw lots of very loud monkeys and a pair of chimps who seemed to be very content sitting there grooming each other..some gigantic anteaters..lots of penguins who weren’t really
Picky eater
The Panda bear picking his leaves interested in marching anywhere.. But definitely seem to have happy feet. The Panda habitat was remarkable and watching a pair of Panda bears munching on their dinner was amusing. One of them had a very particular way of eating his bamboo leaves..He had a bunch of bamboo sticks on one hand.. Would rip the leaves out of each stick, collect them on the side of his mouth and only eat it once he had an acceptable amount of leaves collected.. I’m guessing he was the male since he was the bigger of the pair.
We saw a naughty camel trying to get into the trash bin parked outside their home.. and sure enough after a number of failed attempts persistance paid off.. even his camel buddy wanted wanted in on the action.. it was pretty funny seeing them cracking open the lid of the trash bin and watching it fall back..
The most memorable habitat had to be the bat cave..yup a real life bat cave. We were in the “Rainforest” and it felt pretty unremarkable..until we walked on what looked like a very dark, cave like area. There was a clear sign of “WARNING” and some very
Camel caught in the cookie jar
yup.. homeboy opened the trash can with his face heavy curtains you had to go through to get into the “cave”. We were both pretty nervous going in..after seeing couple of teenagers walk up to it, read the warning sign (which was in German) and decide against going in the cave..But against my better judgement we went in.. And sure enough there were bats loose and flying around!!!!! Now you would never see anything like this in a zoo in the States..I was walking in front of David and at the first sight of a flying object above my head I decide to bolt for the door.. But my ever so loving fiancé decided to push me ahead...yup I was not a happy camper..not a big fan of those ugly things.. All I could think of was the camping trip we were on few years ago.. And all those bats flying with Khatchig and Big D screaming their lungs out 😊
The day had turned into night and the weather was getting pretty chilli (the daytime hours here are very limited..it gets light about 8:15a and dark by 4p). We gave a quick visit to the elephants..saw some zepra walking around in circles and decided we had had
WARNING! Bats ahead
Mr. Fearless ignoring the warning signs.. our fill of animules for the year.
We opted against the hour or so walk back and took the train back home.. I’m pretty impressed how quickly we figured out the public transit system here.. Not that it’s all that complicated 😊
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