The World's Oldest Zoo - Vienna, Austria

Part One

Among the regal white horses pulling carriages, the polished ivory marble buildings and obviously the tourists, deep in the heart of Vienna, Austria lays the oldest zoo in the world. Before you get there though, you’ll have to embark on a journey through the Schönbrunn and it’s grounds. It’s not that it’s strenuous by any means, its simply jaw dropping and the attention to detail is remarkable. Marked as the summer home for the old royals, this palace has neatly paved gardens that could only have been achieved by someone with OCD. The grass is neatly positioned beside a collection of white rocks that form a path. It’s as if nothing ever grows out of it’s own place and the flowers never bloom any way but up. On the walk from the palace, through the gardens, you walk through a small forest, also paved to perfection. Big leaves on walnut trees have been trimmed and clipped to form an arch, leaving only a sliver of sky to shine through. Although as an adult I am amazed at the parks perfection, my mother tells me when I was a little girl, we would come here on walks everyday and the moment she lost sight of me I was tugging on the tall flowers simply trying to pull them closer than we so I could look them in the face.

Much like the extravagant palace and the magical gardens, the animals at the zoo seem to get a royal treatment as well. There are some zoos that house their animals in depressing cages and others that house them in lackluster enclosures. Vienna on the other hand, built an intricate habitat for every single creature here; therefore I spent about eight hours feeling like I was in the wild. The employees do such a great job of leaving the windows streak free that sometimes I forgot there was even glass between the animals and I. More so than any other zoo I have visited in the world, all of these animals were happy. I didn’t catch a single animal pacing in its cage and many of them were eager to interact. Speaking of interacting, they even have a bat cave that you can walk through with hundreds of bats flying freely. You can’t walk through the cave without being swiped by at least 20 bats. If that sort of thing isn’t for you, there is an option to go around this habitat and continue on your journey.

At many times throughout my visit, I felt as if I was in dozens of countries in the span of  just eight hours. I felt as if I were in the Tibetan mountains with snow leopards or in the South American rainforest with a variety of monkeys swinging freely or chasing butterflies right above your head. The African habitat houses giant leathery rhinos and I never thought I could get that close to a baby elephant. If I reached over far enough, probably doing one of those Pilates stretches, I’d surely be able to touch most of the animals. That’s the thing here in Austria - no one does that. Everyone enters this zoo knowing they paid about 25 Euro to be in a world that’s not their own. As soon as I entered, I knew I was stepping into a world of animals, and I was simply just a fly on their trees, instead of the other way around.

To Be Continued…

The moments in between my travels.

I wanted to take a moment out of the travel blog to answer a question I am always asked in my life.  That question is: how do I get to travel so much to see all of these places, yet still maintain a normal day to day life.

Answer: I never dreamt of going to these places. I made them part of my future, almost as regular as a doctors appointment for some people. I budgeted for them correctly, actually opening a saving account rather than watching my Starbucks breakfast chip away at my cruise ticket in my checking account.

An entry from my personal thoughts journal….

Why Vision Boards Work - 

There are so many goals I was to accomplish. I can dream them up and imagine all I want to, but in my physical and real life, I’m not making them part of my future. Instead, my mind in encroached with thoughts of tomorrow’s to-do checklist. These goals and visions can all become something like a to do list if you don’t sit down and enjoy them instead. So please don’t forget that building your vacation budget or working out should be fun. After all; your visions should make you happy.

Step 1: Write a list of categories. Mine were: health and fitness, travel, relationships, beauty, positive traits, home and family, desires, spirituality and career. These should be the foundation of your vision board.

Step 2: Try to pick 3 visions or goals (under each subcategory) you see yourself wanting to do or be and enjoy making those changes in the next year. Some people make 5+ year vision boards, but I personally don’t need 5+ years to travel to Paris, run a 5K, and have the perfect skin. I want a shorter deadline because I wasn’t to be living in Manhattan already.

Step 3: Attach all of your magazine clippings, quotes, proverbs, and photos to a piece of board along with you your key words written in marker on your board.

I’m on my second day of the vision board high, and I feel like a lot of my decisions are all focused on the “bigger picture.” Rather than be foolishly entertained by another episode of “How I Met Your Mother,” even though that show gets a clap from me every time a character has a great line, I’ve been doing a much better job of keeping my own time, instead of throwing or giving my time away. It also makes me feel like small decisions shouldn’t be so great of a worry. If I want to plant a seed so a tree can grow, I should choose to shine my own sunshine on it, rather than stand above it and cast a shadow where my tree, which will bear fruit by the time I’m done with it, should grow.

Diamond Head Crater - Honolulu

Waking up at 4:00 am on vacation is not what it’s for. We take them so we can sleep into late morning, take our time in front of the mirror, and take advantage of the hotels travel size lotion;dabbing a little onto our hands and rubbing it while standing on the patio of the hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Today there would be no hand lotion with a cup of tea on my patio. Nor would I be able to roll around in a bed with clean white linens and a few too many pillows. I wouldn’t be able to spend my morning in the 1000 thread count cocoon. Instead, I was filling the water tank for my in-room coffee maker. Surely no barista was up at this time in the morning to make me a macadamia nut latte. I had landed in Honolulu two nights ago, and already had a collection of flowers that I had tucked in behind my ear every morning. I walked to the lobby tripping over the rugs because my eyes were barely open. My lungs were already awake from breathing in the fresh salty air. The concierge rang a shuttle driver and soon we were inside of a 1990 Sprinter and heading to the base of Diamond Head crater.

We jumped out of the van and slid the door shut. There was a three-minute hike up the base of the canyon and we would be looking through the giant metal fence into the tunnel leading to the inside of the crater. We waited for five minutes until a guard opened the gate and allowed us to enter. A group of about 30 people headed to the ticket counter. Usually more show up but they predicated rain this morning. That’s probably another thing you don’t do on vacation; hike in the rain.  The hike was moderate up the hill but all the different types of plants I’ve never seen kept my attention and took my time. The last part of the hike was a bunch of stairs. This is where we were able to pass up most of the crowd. At the end, about five stairs lead you to the top of the mountain. From there you have a threehundedsixty degree view of the ocean and the island.

To my left there was a bend in the island leading the ocean to porches of many wealthy residents. The beach was lined with palm trees that looked like tiny needles sticking out from ground from where I was standing. The beach pulled up and paved a tree filled wave up to the peak of a smaller mountain. Streetlights glowed like fireflies do in the early morning sky.  Behind me was a group of homes that lay between two peaks. The peaks looked so rocky and humid, even from afar, that I could tell you homes have slid down into in to the valley and you'd believe me.  To my right was the strip of resorts and hotels. If you came from the right you were just visiting but if you came from the left you took advantage of this beautiful view because you were lucky enough to live here. A low morning tide brought waves in from far away and made it seem as if the water was shallow even a hundred yards off of the beach. A little further to the left and you could see a small island in the distance. The rim of the crater surrounded us and if I zoomed out far enough, I could have felt like bacteria in a petri dish with a camera dangling from my neck. Straight ahead of me, the sun began to rise off of the curve of the earth. I could feel the air getting warmer and my nose gradually stopped running. The warmth of the sun shaded the rain clouds above the ocean and the water they were crying into the Pacific. I could see the sun’s aura pushing away the darkness from the night. Soon enough the sky was filled with it’s warmth. I sat in the same spot for an hour and soaked the moment in. When I was done, I took my time going down the mountain but kept passing people as I descended. I wasn’t going to waste too much of my day without heading to my favorite diner in Honolulu and having their famous guava filled French toast.

 

Antelope Canyon - Arizona

     A four hour drive with the windows down and nothing but Tom Petty on the radio were just a few things it took to get to Antelope Canyon, Arizona. A full tank of gas and stale gas station coffee would give me and Joe the buzz we needed to make that long and random drive. What we were suppose to see in the end would be promising and would be worth the 25 mile per hour drive through Tuba City. Tuba City is a desolate deserted area of just that; desert. A few tepee’s and rusty broken down trucks was the entire town had to offer the passerby’s. If they got lucky, you’d pull over on to a dirt road off of the freeway and see their “alien crash landing” site.

    The temperature up north was cooler than the blazing Phoenix sun. I was able to lower the windows the further north we drove. Soon my hair was wind whipped and I could barely fit my hair tie around it. I chewed through a sour green apple and it woke me up more than the cheap gas station coffee. The blistering sun was still present even though the temperature had dropped, and I could feel it baking my skin through the windshield. The drive was simple. We talked about many of the great inventions or business ideas we had, making side notes of all of the small townspeople we saw on our way up. I still wonder to this day, what people do for a living in those small towns in the middle of nowhere, with their homes high up on a hill. I either think they’re retired, criminals, or agoraphobic. Your guess is probably as good as mine.

    The navigation map on my phone is thrown in and out of service because we are so far in the middle of nowhere. From the dashboard you can see in hood of the car has been covered in a film of red dust. As I look out the front of the car an arrow points left and directs us to a parking lot full of other dusty cars. Here is the entrance for Antelope Canyon. The canyon is part of Indian Territory and it can only be accessed by the natives and their forty dollars per person fee. We’ve already made online reservations so we walk up to the front of the line and give our last names. From the corner of my eye I catch the head native sitting in a bench, in the shade, with a fan directed at him. He looks old and wise while also giving off a vibe that the whole world revolves around him. He must have done great things to be this high on the totem pole. Pun intended.

     We raise our hands as our last names are called out and board an even dustier blue pickup truck. They manage to squeeze about 15 individuals on the back of the pickup truck – with everyone holding on to the railings for dear life. A ten-minute drive through a sandy road, thank goodness for sunglasses, and you arrive at the front of the canyon. It doesn’t look like much, but we picked the peak tie of the day to see it, so our tour guide reassures us this will be good. Her name is Alaya and she is eager to share pictures of her dog on her phone. She tells us she makes the drive from Phoenix up here every weekend to work and I give her a pat on her back for driving through Tuba City so many times and not being ultimately depressed. She takes my camera and puts it on the proper setting telling me that I have no idea how many phone calls the company gets of customers complaining that their pictures didn’t turn out like the ones on their website.

    As I walk further into the canyon with my tour group, not even a crying baby in the distance can disrupt me from the view I have. Orange halos hang between the cliffs like fierce flames lighting the roof like a hot fire. Sand in thrown into the beams of sun and it falls down to the ground, dancing like a ballerina with a piece of orange silk. I am absolutely in awe of this natural piece of art. It’s as if someone were pouring cake batter in slow waves out of a bowl and it was stiffening on contact. I took as many pictures as I could to capture the moment but the pictures don’t even do Antelope Canyon justice.  I was so busy looking up for almost half a mile that I didn’t realize we had already made it to the end. We took a break on the other side of the canyon, had a sip of water, and made a pact that we all stick together as a group on our way back through the canyon as we endured visitors that were as entranced as we had just been. 

    We waited at the opening of the canyon and it was at that moment that we realized how hot it actually was. We has sweat on our upper lips, sand in our hair, and scratches on our sunglasses from the little particles in the air. I mustered out the last drop of water from my water bottle as I made me way on to the blue van. Our tour guide grew a liking for me after I asked her too many questions about herself and offered Joey and I a seat with her in the front of the van. Air conditioning and not being squished between 14 other people – DONE! As we pulled up back to the loading area we exchanged a few kind words with her and headed back to the car. A wet wipe, hand sanitizer, and a small snack later we would be on our way back h through Tuba City and back home. The wonder of the canyon went by quickly but the drive back didn’t’. I sat with my camera for about two hours on the driving going through the 300 pictures I had taken and only being satisfied with about three or four. It was really about getting the perfect angle, in the perfect lighting, with the sun shining through while it was in the exact perfect spot in the sky. The trip to Antelope Canyon is absolutely worth it, but it’s only to be done once.