Meine Reise in Deutschland (My Trip to Germany): Vienna! Part 1

So, the second week of my time off before the semester, I got to go to Vienna for 4 days to hang out with Kate, one of my wonderful friends from Schwabisch Hall who's studying there. They were on break too, so we could do stuff all day, and here roommate was out of town so I even got to sleep in the spare bed instead of in a hostel! It was absolutely wonderful. We had so much fun. I totally wish we were in the same program or at least the same city so we could hang out all the time.
Travelling was an adventure, though. I forgot that, over here, Easter Monday is an official holiday as well. Therefore the busses were on a different schedule. I realized this about 5 minutes too late. That means that the bus I was planning on taking to the train station was not coming. So I had to take one about 20 minutes later. Which meant I missed my train to Stuttgart by approximately 1 minute. Which meant that even though I splurged on a taxi and the guy drove me there crazy (illegally) fast and helped me find my check-in place, I missed my plane. Yeah. So I had to rebook. Luckily I found one for later that evening. So I hung out in the Stuttgart airport for a few hours, and landed in Vienna at about 10:15 pm.
I had had to spend basically all of my on-hand cash for the new ticket (my debit card was being stupid), and I had to spend the rest of it on a bus to get to the subway station. I then had about 75 cents, and had to ride the U-Bahn (subway) *gasp!* without a ticket. Luckily for me I was correct in assuming no one would come around to check at 12:15am. I finally made it, and Kate met me at the U-Bahn stop and took me to her dorm. Relief.

Day 1
So, the first day we went around the main part of Vienna looking at all the pretty and important buildings (basically following the principle of "oooh, that looks shiny and/or important; let's go there!), and then went to a triple museum--The Imperial Silver (i.e. all their dishes), the Sisi Museum (of the famous Kaiserin (Empress) Elisabeth), and the Imperial Apartments. It was really neat, but unfortunately I could only take pictures in the first one. Oh well. We ate at an Italian restaurant, and went home, exhausted, by 7pm, and then stayed up chatting until much later than intended, haha!

One of the important buildings - Parliament!

The super-secret Imperial napkin fold, which may only be used when the Imperial family is dining and is known only to 2 staff members to protect its secrecy. I'm totally serious!

Kate in one of the rooms in the Silver Museum. There were at least 10 rooms, I would estimate, maybe 15. I have no pictures that accurately express just how many dishes there were. It was actually pretty cool, but we had definately had our fill of dishes by the end!

Day 2
On the second day, we went to an aquarium/zoo (i.e. mostly an aquarium with a bit of a rainforesty greenhouse section) called Haus des Meers, or House of the Sea. Oh yeah, it's a cheesy name.

It is kind of a strange building, not the sort of place you would expect to be a super-cool aquarium.

There were Hammerhead sharks in the tank just past the register!

We went through the way they suggested, which involved first going up to the very top, where the viewing platform offered a fantastic view of Vienna!

We were a little concerned after that that we'd been ripped off, because the next couple floors were basically a stairwell with posters along it. Yeah. Turns out the aquarium itself doesn't begin until floor 4 or 5 (the top is floor 9), so we were considerably relieved to come out in a room with a giant tank in it.

This sea turtle was a total diva and was posing for me the entire time we were in that room. I probably have a dozen pictures just of him. :)

This is the rainforesty greenhouse add-on. There were birds and turtles and tiny little monkeys (just like I saw in Brazil!) basically roaming free in their little "habitat". So cool!

Tiny little monkeys!

There were lots of other things like sting rays, eels, jellyfish, pregnant seahorses, snakes, lots of fish, etc.

This tube is full of ants that are traveling between one terrarium and another. The tube curves down shortly after this to about handrail level, probably mostly to creep people out!