Haus des Meeres and Belvedere

I was amused by this poster across the street from Bill's apartment: "Usually I buy art at IKEA." (It also says "Easier than a Table at Mraz & Sohn," which is a Viennese restaurant.) It's an ad for this online art gallery.

Bill and I spent yesterday out and about, mainly at the Haus des Meeres, or House of the Sea. It's a public aquarium built inside an adapted flakturm, like the ones I showed you in yesterday's post. This is a bizarre idea, when you think about it -- housing sea creatures in a high-rise concrete bunker -- but I thought it was a brilliant way to re-use one of those Nazi-era hulks.

My only complaint is that it's not exactly spacious inside the tower -- lots of smallish rooms and winding hallways and stairs -- and there were quite a few people there yesterday. It was Ascension Day, a public holiday, with schools and many shops closed, so the place was swarming with kids.

There are great views of Vienna from the top deck.

In my video you'll also get a sample of the visible sea life at the aquarium, including small sharks practicing their synchronized swimming maneuvers, a colorful fish known as a queen coris or Formosa wrasse, and some jellyfish.

Here's what the building looks like from the outside. You can see the platforms known as "swallow's nests" that were designed to hold anti-aircraft guns, and now support wildlife exhibits. The video shows what they look like from above. (There were more than just fish at this aquarium -- there were also insects, small mammals like monkeys and lemurs, and reptiles.)

After enjoying the Haus des Meeres, we walked through a nearby shopping district along Mariahilfer Straße. We stopped at a place called Duran for "sandwiches," which were really single slices of bread with various toppings. I ambitiously bought a six-piece selection and ate them all with no problem. (They're pretty small.) The flavor combinations were quite sophisticated.

From there we decided to go to Belvedere Palace, one of the Hapsburg royal residences from the early 1700s. Along the way we passed lots of interesting architecture and scenery, like the row of colorful buildings above.

And here's the outside of Belvedere. You know those Hapsburgs -- always so understated.

I'd been to Belvedere Palace before, when I came to Vienna for the first time almost 30 years ago. So we didn't go inside. We simply wandered the grounds, including a formal garden with cascading fountains (which must have been engineering marvels in their day) and an adjacent botanical garden affiliated with the University of Vienna.

These sphinxes stood guard around the edges of the formal gardens.

By mid-afternoon we were exhausted, so we came back to Bill's and rested for a while. We had a modest dinner -- I got a falafel pita from a place near his flat and he had a leftover burrito from our Mexican meal the day before -- and in my ongoing campaign to educate Bill about '70s disaster flicks, we watched "The Towering Inferno." Bill pronounced it much better than "Earthquake," which I suppose is objectively true, though "Earthquake" will always hold a special place in my heart.

Alas, I've run out of time to show him "The Poseidon Adventure," though I will extract a promise from him to watch it. This afternoon I'm headed back to London!