Haus des Merres: Aqua Terra Zoo, Vienna

I’ve got a ton of posts to crank out on our family vacation to Sicily and Salzburg. I’m hoping to get my butt in gear. Here’s a quick peek at what I expect to cover:

Haus des Meeres is a great family activity on a rainy day. If you’re looking for a place to take your kids on a bad weather day, you can spend a full day there.

Located near the Kettenbruckengasse and Zieglergasse U-Bahn stations, it’s not hard to get to via public transportation. We had read good things about the Aqua Terre Zoo online, but it exceeded even those positive expectations.

The building is an interesting structure. It’s 9 or 10 stories tall and there are different groups of animals on each floor. What’s even more interesting is the history of the building. A plaque on the top floor talks about the history. The towers were built during World War 2. They were built by prisoners of war and were meant to help protect the city from Allied attacks.

There was a decent line for tickets when we arrived. The facility was at capacity and they were only letting people in a few at a time. I ended up waiting in line about 20 minutes while the kids went to go get a snack. There is an online ticket option as well.

Adult tickets were €17.60 while tickets for children ages 6-15 were €8.00.

The Animals

The variety of animals really surprised us. Each floor contained multiple different exhibits. We’re talking monkeys, sharks, sea turtles, crabs, iguanas and a ton more. They were extremely hands-on. Where it wasn’t hands-on it was “heads up” with the kids being able to immerse themselves in the exhibits. Or, it was interactive, such as the handrail in the monkey area that contained an ant ecosystem.

It was such an awesome variety of creatures. Their habitats seemed clean and they seemed to be very well taken care of. There was plenty of English language signage to go along with local language descriptions.

I’ll let our pictures do the rest of the talking. You could easily spend an entire day here and not see everything. If you go, make sure to visit the top floor to get a great view of Vienna. There’s a cafe up there as well, but the view is the real treat.