This is what you see when you walk in the front door:
LOOK OUT!
In the natural history museum in Raleigh, all of the exhibits are directly related to the natural history of North Carolina; in the Vienna Natural History Museum, you walk in on a lion - I'm no pro here, but I don't think that they have lions in Austria.
It was immediately evident that this museum would have more of a worldly representation in their exhibits.
I do not need to go to the zoo in Prague anymore; at this Museum I saw minerals, space rocks, birds, fish, whales, bears, monkeys, lions, elephants, wooly mammoths, dinosaurs, fossils, butterflys, sharks, frogs, snakes, alligators, ostriches, mice, rhinos, buffalo, deer, walruses, early human tools, pottery, and countless other things. I say I saw frogs - really, I saw about 200 frogs. I say I saw alligators - really, I saw about 30 alligators of all different sizes and species. It was so all-encompassing, better than any zoo I have ever been to, minus the fact that everything was dead and stuffed.
The lighting was terrible in the museum, but here are a few highlights:
BIG SPACE ROCKS:
...and others:
So that's really all the pictures I took in the Natural History Museum (the good ones, anyways). It was quite the experience, though, I don't think I'll ever end up in a Natural History Museum more impressive than that.
We exited the museum when it closed at 6:30, and were HUNGRY, looking for food. We walked until we spotted a Billa (BILLA! We love the Billa, it's the place to find cheap groceries in Prague, and here, too!).
Except the Billa was CLOSED ALL DAY SUNDAY.
Boom. Everything, we realized, was either closed, or closed early, on Sundays. Everything, that is, except, MCCDONALDS.
This was the first time that I have had American food in the whole month I've been abroad, mind you, and it was GOOD. It was also very expensive, (as our waitress at a restraunt today put it: "Vienna has money much more than does Prague").
Would you spend 4Euro (roughly $5.25) on this?
Because I did. And it was good.
They had a computer in the McDonald's and so we got on the internet and did a Wikipedia search of Vienna, and found a picture of the view from our hostel! Here is the link that we found in the Mcdonald's, which is the view out of our window/door at the Palace Hostel:
So that made the trip to McDonald's all worth it; finding out that our hostel was the view that they call "himmel" (heaven), made us that much more pumped to be in The Palace Hostel! We retreated for a quiet evening, and made sure to say Happy Birthday to Laura-Nelle, who at midnight turned 21! It was a quiet evening, and we enjoyed the view over the city immensely. It was quite the day, with big plans for Monday as well...
Mrs P here. Were the animals (lizards and such) in the Nature Museum, live or stuffed? Because the lizards look alive. That's one amazing nature museum, I'd love to go there.
ReplyDeleteSo did the McDonalds taste different and/or have different menu items? Because I know that's true for some of the McDonalds in Europe. McWiener Schnitzel Anyone?
The lizards were definitely alive, I got pictures of them because they had good lighting from their heat lamps. Everything else had good viewing light, but terrible light for quality pictures.
ReplyDeleteThe McDonald's tasted exactly the same, and I made sure to eat it sloooooooow. The menu was pretty much exactly the same, as well, the only thing that was different was the physical space of the McDonald's. It was sleek, nice, new, and had a large space connected to it called the "McCafe."
McWeiner Schnitzel, haha.