Today was a sunshiny day! Hurray! We had coffee and some cheese from our refrigerator for breakfast. Then it was off to the train to go to the Natural History Museum (Naturhistorisches Museum) on Maria-Theresenplatz which is in the museum district. This is an enormous building with 39 grand halls just crammed with 30 million fascinating objects. The Hapsburgs built this place in the 19^th century to appropriately house their collections of “stuff”—they were inveterate collectors with a passion for discovery and knowledge and of course had the money and ability to buy whatever they wanted. The main reason I wanted to visit this museum is they have the original Venus of Willendorf statue here. So that was our first stop—the prehistory section which is on the left side of the ground floor. Do you all know the Venus statue? It is a teensy (4 in.) figurine carved from limestone that is thought to be approximately 30,000 years old. Can you imagine? No one knows for sure what its use was but it is thought to be a fertility figure. There were some other fascinating carvings here also including one that was another very ancient figurine of a dancing girl. They had an amazing collection here. Fossilized skeletons, ancient gold, and prehistoric carvings! Wow! 

Next stops were the dinosaurs and other fossils. If you are interested in fossils this is quite an amazing collection. Be sure to check out the largest turtle ever found and the numerous flying dinosaur fossils. They had some of the world's largest casts of dinosaur skeletons here, too. And also, be sure to see the dinosaur nest that still had eggs in it and the dinosaur feces (dinosaur poop! Just what one wants to see, right?). 

Then we were off to the right side of the main floor which houses the rooms of meteorites, minerals and gemstones! Wow! The world’s largest and oldest collection of meteorites is here, as well as some of the imperial jewelry. There were crystals and agates almost as large as we are! Can you believe it? And gold nuggets that were enormous—the size of footballs! They also had minerals from all over the world including from our state of Missouri! That was a true surprise!

We decided to omit the first floor as that was dedicated to animal life and includes case after case of taxidermied (is that a word?) animals, birds, etc. including specimens of now-extinct creatures such as Steller's sea cow (could collecting be one of the reasons for this?) But NO, this was not my favorite thing. So up the stairs we walked—and it was an amazing stairway!—only to be met at the landing by Maria Theresa’s dog which was stuffed so she could keep it. The Hapsburgs liked pets of all kinds and seemed to always want to keep them, so you find dogs, birds, etc. that have been turned into taxidermy specimens—creepy, huh?

As it was getting toward lunch time, we decided to see what the restaurant was like here. One of the things we have found so great in these museums is they have their own restaurants with delicious food at really reasonable prices and in gorgeous settings. And this one was no different! They were not crowded today and had a set menu that we chose. We both had a glass of wine (Gruner Veltliner, of course), and Mike had the onion soup while I had a salad as a starter. Then he had a Vienna sausage (not the kind in the can) with rice and a creamy cucumber salad and I had the vegetarian lasagna and shared his cucumber salad. Another delicious meal in a spectacular place!

Even though we were getting tired we moved on to see the ship model exhibit which was also fascinating—and more importantly it’s also right outside the toilets. Then tired but happy we walked back to the trains so that we could pack to get ready to head home tomorrow. Supper tonight was snacks in our room as we tried to fit everything into our luggage! That is always the proverbial problem at the end of a trip, isn’t it?