The Vienna Diaries – Day Two: Museums

So following our trip to Schönbrunn on day one, which you can read about here day 2 of our break took us to the museums and the aquarium. When I started looking at Vienna a few years ago, the range of weird and wonderful museums really caught my eye. You’ve everything from a globe museum through to a torture museum. Brutal.

Some of the museums do have short opening hours, so it’s best to try and plan ahead. We definitely need to go back because out of all of them we only managed the aquarium and torture museum. Kind of saddened that we didn’t get to do more, but since we used to hop on hop off bus to get there it gave us shorter times to have a look around.

Billy Joel once sung a song about Vienna waiting for you. It doesn’t Billy, it really doesn’t.

The Haus de Meeres – Aquarium, is a little out from where were staying and a 15 minute walk from the main museum quarter but it is worth it. Stretched over 11 floors, the aquarium is home to Crocodiles, Lizards, Snakes and turtles plus much more. Watch out for the handrails on some of the floors, they have ants in them. The most nerve-wracking bit for me was the beginning of the aquarium where you have to walk through the tank, with a glass bottom floor. So proud of myself that I made it through it. I hate clear flooring.

Floor 9 and 11 give you the opportunity to take in the views of Vienna, we only made it to floor 9, I was starting to get major vertigo!! But it still gave some beautiful views of this gorgeous city.

(Just outside the aquarium is a small park and a climbing wall for visitors to enjoy)

Following our trip to the aquarium, Chris (and myself) wanted to go to the Torture museum. This is only a small museum, and doesn’t take more than half an hour. If you have your Vienna pass you get a reduced rate and pay 4.50EUR as opposed to the regular 6EUR. The receptionist was really helpful and gave us an English guide explaining each of the sections, most of the information on the wall is in German. It was quite interesting to learn about the different ways people were tortured in the past. Some more gruesome than others, but if you want something different and away from the norm then I’d recommend this.

Given the 33 degree heat outside and the miles we’d walked we had called it quits for the day at this point as we had a walk back to the bus stand and back to the hotel too. I’m hoping that I can go back again, just to have a museum weekend.

Next week i’ll be blogging about day 3 and our visit to Prater Park!

Until next time,

ps – Do you like to visit museums? What’s the most interesting attraction/museum you’ve been to?