Zoo Zürich

As you can see, we had a beautiful day here, pretty enough to inspire us to take our first trip to the Zürich zoo. First of many: we picked up season passes, despite the 45-minute commute. Because zoos, they’re fun!

The zoo set up a "how long can you stand on
one foot" timer next to the flamingos.  We let
Ella run it up to five minutes before the rest
of us got ansty.

It was a little too windy for the picnic we put together--our napkins flew everywhere and our coffee chilled rapidly--but we’ll give that another go when the weather gets warmer. Each of their large picnic pavilions is across from an elaborate playground, so next time, after the kids gobble down their lunches, Dennis and I can really sit back and enjoy those cups of coffee while the kids play. We were reluctant to let them run around too much in the first playground: the icky weather turned the wood chips into a mud pit.

But Joey, the one most likely to end up end over ears, lingered over his pb&j, so there were no small tragedies.

I wanted to make sure we got to the zoo in the winter, because, while the weather is cold, promptly at 14:30, the keepers take the penguins out for a stroll halfway across the zoo.  The parade is highly publicized and a huge draw, and although we made it over to the penguin enclosure early, the crowd was already impenetrable. Dennis, bless him, humored me when he saw my sad face, and we ran the kids up around the perimeter of the zoo to meet the penguins on the other side.  And it was totally worth the dash.

Ella reports that there were 17 penguins on the parade today.

We recrossed the zoo at a more leisurely pace, spending plenty of time at each of the play areas.

I’ve decided a zoo just isn’t complete without a zip line!

After fifteen minutes on the slide, Joey got a little frustrated with us.  We weren’t giving the proper response to his request of “Monkey house! Monkey house!” i.e., packing it in and making a mad dash to the monkeys.  So he tried telling us what he wanted in a different way.

"Look, look!  That!" he told us.

We did, eventually, see quite a few animals. Sadly, the enclosures were a lot smaller than you’d find in American zoos, and Joey’s apes and monkeys were tucked away together in a monkey house, which I haven’t seen since my childhood, but it did make it easy for the kids to see and enjoy the animals.  And the only time Joey really fussed today was when I told him it was time to leave those monkeys.

As all zoos seem to, Zürich had peacocks and peahens roaming the zoo grounds, but there were also wild stork nests everywhere, not only on the poles that they’d clearly erected to lure them, but also on top of many of the enclosures.

Although we were at the zoo for over four hours, we didn’t see half of it.  Still to see are an enormous rainforest building and a children’s petting zoo that apparently has the best playground of all.
Next time!