Natural History & Spanish Riding

Today, we would finally successfully make it into the Vienna Museum of Natural History. First, we saw the training for the Spanish horse riding school in the Plaza of the Statue Emperor Joseph II. This was very interesting and quite unique to see. Although we didn't see the full repertoire of skills possible by the horses, despite being close to the performance day, we saw some pretty cool stuff. Along with the horses training for the show, we also got to see the 'rookie' horses being brought up. This was perhaps just as interesting as the rest of the show as the horses are incredibly well trained and coordinated, so it was interesting to get an insight into this. We did see one horse pony-up on its back legs, but that was about as exciting as it got. The rest of the stuff was just seeing the horses trot around. This was still cool given the number of ways the horses could dance, hop, and run around the pit. Once again, it was interesting to get insight into how they could get them to move as they do. Unfortunately, photos aren't allowed, so it was hard to get good photos, but we did score a few. After this, we headed to the Natural Museum for History. We headed to the second floor to begin the tour after a quick coffee. This resulted in 2 hours of wandering around the different fauna exhibitions and information pieces. As we approached two hours, you could quickly begin to understand how much information is present on the site and how much time could be absorbed in such a place if you read all the information. A matter of days rather than hours. It was cool to go through the African sections, and see which animals I had spotted during my safari and my tours, then head to Australia and see animals what we have there that I hadn't yet seen. Such as the wombat and even a Tasmanian devil taxidermy. This went all over the world. Seeing hundreds and hundreds of animals. After this and a quick break, we went on to the evolution and geology floor to finish the museum. This also went for 2 hours in the end as well. This started with the geological history of earth and had endless amounts of different elements, compounds, and rocks from all over the world. Some were quite unique in the colour, shape, formation, and purpose. This was quite cool to see, but you could quite easily just walk through without needing to read the information pieces. Had I more energy and less soreness in the legs, I may have spent more time, but a lot of it wasn't particularly interesting, and I was keen to get to the evolutionary history. This was really interesting as we could see how sapiens evolved, the difference in species, how home sapiens became dominant, how our brain developed, and progressed into how we came to dominate the world. This then evolved to reflect the effects of modern climate change and how quickly our species has impacted global species. It was a sad but necessary way to end the day. After 2 hours of walking, again, and 4 hours total, I was very excited to find somewhere to sit and put my feet up. We found a nice Viennese restaurant to do so, and I enjoyed a Cordon Bleu. After this long day, we dragged our tired legs back to the hotel to sleep.Read more