Gothy Two Shoes: Vienna Day 2: Natural History Museum

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Vienna Day 2: Natural History Museum

I started out early to visit the Natural History Museum, or Naturhistorisches Museum. It is housed in the museum district of Vienna, which was a short 15 minute walk from my hostel. It faces the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Art History Museum, and both buildings are very similar and wonderful.

I really enjoy Vienna. There was a grocery store near my hostel, and chocolate was only 1euro. It was much easier to shop around compared to Rome. I wanted to try all of the different things.

I highly suggest visiting the Naturhistorisches Museum, it's the best museum I have ever visited. There are loads of specimens, taxidermy and dinosaurs. The museum also houses the Venus of Willendorf.

The wooden display cases in each room were old fashioned and really awesome.

This was a scale model of a failed experiment, where they tried to create a closed ecosystem. It failed because bacteria was brought in from outside and ruined everything.

Deep sea creature fossils

Around the ceiling of each room there were carved statues holding different items related to the room. Later on you'll see some statues holding lizards.

I loved the various diarama, look how detailed and awesome they are!

I love how it's coming out of the display case.

Huge fossil on the wall, it goes to the ceiling.

Creepy crawly prehistoric spider fossil

Huge dinosaur leg.

Fossil with drawing of what they would look like.

This robotic dinosaur took my breath away when I entered the room. It moved it's tail and growls, it looked very lifelike and made me very excited!

The ceiling statues are holding repiles and dinosaurs

Austrians about to be eaten by dinosaur bones

Huge lifesize mammoth

The Venus of Willendorf get her own house. There were not many people in the museum, so I got her all to myself :)

Very dark inside, to protect her from damage I expect.

You pressed a button and heard a person from each area talk about themselves. Perth is following me wherever I go! I don't really know why they chose Perth instead of a more popular city like Sydney or Melbourne.

Giant octopus tentacle.

Inside a log is a live bee hive!! There was a bee display next to it, and I was thinking to myself "it would be cool if they had real bees" and then I lifted the piece of fabric on the log and inside was a buzzing hive! How awesome!!

I wonder if the museum collects the honey?

The underwater area was fantastic. You entered a dark room, and the lighting looked like you were underwater, and there was ocean noises playing. Really lovely and beautiful.