Vienna Day 1

These next few blogs are going to be rather detailed summaries of our trips in Europe. If you get bored or don't feel like reading it in depth, feel free to skim through it.
In November we went on a three day trip to Vienna, Austria. Being poor college students we decided we could only go if we could get there cheaply. We decided to take the train, a 16 hour trip one way! Not entirely sure what we had gotten ourselves into, we headed off to the train station. We got lucky! The train was Harry Potter style, compartments with six seats and a sliding door. Luckily, the train was empty enough that we had a compartment to ourselves. It wasn't the most comfortable night ever, but it wasn't much worse than a night on a stiff sofa.
The next morning (Nov 13th) we arrived in Vienna and headed to the Art History Museum. Here they had a nice exhibit from Ancient Egypt and Rome, as well as an art gallery filled with the works of famous painters. We had some rather disgusting pizza for lunch from a street vender, but made the most of it and headed of to the Hofsburg. The Hofsburg is the Imperial Palace where the monarchy used to live before Austria became a democracy. It is a large complex with many museums and interesting attractions. They had an exhibit on medieval weaponry, which David really likes, so that was our first stop. They also had an exhibit on musical instruments from the last few centuries which we enjoyed.
That evening we went to the Staatsoper Opera House. Vienna is well known for its love of opera, and we did not want to miss out on that cultural experience. This is a very famous opera house where Mozart used to perform. We got some cheap tickets and saw Madame Butterfly. The opera house was beautiful and we thoroughly enjoyed the performance. Each seat had access to a small screen that provided the English translation as the opera was in Italian.
That night we stayed in a nice hotel with a yummy buffet breakfast (hurray for the off-season drop in prices!).

Fun at the Zoo

When we went to Vienna, Austria lately, we visited Schonbrunn Palace, one of the residences of the Emperor. We'll write more details on the whole trip soon and post pictures (we promise!).
We thought the decorations inside the palace weren't very attractive, but the grounds and gardens were very beautiful. Part of the Palace grounds includes the Austrian Zoo. Founded in 1752 for the Holy Roman Emperor, it is the oldest zoo in the world. We love visiting zoos (especially the National Zoo in D.C. which is free) and thought it would be a great idea to have your own private zoo in your backyard. So, here's the question: assuming you had unlimited resources and were building a personal zoo, but could only have 5 animals, which would you choose? Comments required! We'll tell you what we came up with after we get some of your ideas.