Day 15: Vienna

The hotel/pension provided breakfast, which was fairly basic, cereal, breads, cheese and meat, but that was fine.

The receptionist also very kindly allowed us to prepare Alex's gluten-free porridge in the kitchen.

It has been quite rainy the entire time that we've been in Vienna, but we are well prepared and also there was a lot of breaks in the rain to allow us to walk around.

After a quick wander around Stephanplatz and the surrounding streets (which were thronged with tourists) we went to the museum of illusions.

The weather was quite bad as we were queuing and I think we were there for about an hour, which was a bit excessive for what it was. Also dad got in an argument with a family of 10 who were trying to skip the queue. They called Ian rude...the cheek!!

After this we went to the museum quarter to visit the museum of Natural history. The route from the city (Stephanplatz) is replete with beautiful buildings

The queue was much smaller for this much larger museum. The layout of the museum from the 1st to the 2nd floor generally follows the development of the earth and life upon it. The first 4 rooms of the museum are therefore filled with minerals, lots and lots of them, who knew the earth produced such a variety?. Like this giant SiO2 crystal.

The dinosaur section was also cool with this cool animatronic Iguanadon and a replica of a terror bird eating a prehistoric ladder.

This is the museum's pride and joy, the Venus of Willendorf, a ferility statuette that is 29,500 years old.

The top floor of the museum is mostly extant animals that have been stuffed. It is really cool, like this Albatross that is about 1/2 as big as Alex (not obvious from the picture's perspective).

Or this moose loose aboot this hoose!

After a long day walking and museum visiting we grabbed some chow at a trattoria near the museum quarter. Alex had lemon chicken and dad had pizza, both very nice.

After this it was back to the pension to watch some red dwarf episodes on the computer.