my brother, his wife, and my their son, aka "nephew" paid us a visit this weekend. as my christmas gift to them was tickets to the zoo for the whole family, they redeemed them today. we were pretty lucky as the polar bears[01-17] were in a play mood and enjoyed their cooling bath in the heat and were busy with a coconut they could not open. we were also tremendously lucky to see the peacock[22-36] fanning out its impressively sized and colourful plumage. that was the first time we saw it for the peacocks in schoenbrunn. my nephew was - as always - fascinated by the penguins[19-21,37-44]. they lined up really cute today and a big group stood there ready to be captured by our cameras. and then we were even more overwhelmed by how lucky we were this day, as also the white peacock showed its fan[45-55]. both peafowls doing their mating ritual on the same day - incredible. then we stopped at the flying foxes[56-63], the small-clawed otter[64-71] (cute as always), the group of black-tailed prairie dogs[76-79], the capybaras[80-82], the tigers[83-88], the hippopotamus[89-91], and - lastly - the sleeping koala bear[92-93]. my nephew seemed to have enjoyed the trip to the zoo, although he got an animal overflow soon, and so after a while ice-cream and playgrounds got more attention than all the animals - comprehensible with the huge amount of animals in the zoo. what a nice family excursion to the zoo, we really enjoyed that.