Zoolino

Ella woke me up this morning, announcing "It's finally here! Summer vacation!"  A little bleary, the best I could come up with was snorting out a "Huh?"  She'd clearly been expecting my confusion, and had a little speech prepared: "Of course! The weekend doesn't count, mom. Vacation doesn't really start until you actually miss what would be a day of school." And then she took off skipping: "Vacation, vacation, la-la-la-la-la..."

Hm. So here we are, the first day of vacation.  Now what?

I've actually been planning for this for months, looking forward to an absence of schedules and to having all three of my kiddos to play with.  But, when our first free day came, I froze.  What I really wanted to do was go to a beach, it looks like we're going to be experiencing something of a Seattle summer all this week.  I mentally tossed around a couple of museums that I hadn't been to, but many museums here are  closed on Mondays.  I thought about hiking, and even had a trail picked out, but then discovered that the bus going to the trail head only runs on Wednesdays.

While I was pounding the computer keys in frustration, the kids were starting to climb the walls a little.  Finally, I just decided to keep it simple. I packed a picnic lunch and some comic books for the bus, and we headed to the zoo.

The kids were excited, but mostly because their favorite playground in all of Zürich is at the zoo.  And that's where we went, straight away.  As soon as the kids saw the top of the climbing structure, they took off at a run, leaving me to get cozy with some supplies that I'd packed for myself...

Both Ella and Alex were excited to babysit Joey on the playground, and so I had a really comfortable time of it.   I was actually the one who got restless, eventually, feeling like I should take the kids to see an animal or two, at least, since we were, after all, at a zoo.


On our way out from the playground, we stumbled across a petting zoo that I didn't even know existed, and that's where we spent most of the rest of the day.  The most interactive area was the goats, and the kids scrambled around on the rocks with all of the baby and mommy goats, happy until Ella noticed that there was goat food for sale.

Next to the vending machine was a little bin of plastic cups, to better hold the handfuls of food that the machine cranked out, and so I got a little cup for each of the kids. Ella took of with her cup, first, and discovered the hard way that those goats know exactly what a neon plastic cup means.  Without a cup, the goats were complacent, happy to be petted, and just as happy to be ignored; as soon as Ella re-entered the pen with her cup, three goats had their hooves up on her chest.

She let out a fierce soprano shriek, and I lifted her bodily over the fence.  "I. Hate. Goats." Ella announced, and stalked off in a sulk.

It wasn't long ago that Alex had uttered those same words, but he's since forgive the goats, and he happily fed them from the safe side of the fence.  The boys really made those goats earn their food, feeding them one tiny pellet at a time.

Ella, meanwhile, calmed herself by walking around the rest of the petting zoo, and she had a great time giving her brothers a tour when they were done.

My little chickadees

 And we even learned a little...who knew?

We also spent quite a lot of time in barn that had been turned into a children's exhibit on bats, hosted by the same folks who had put up the bat-listening station on the Limmat.  Joey, particularly was rapt by exhibits. Tonight, when it was time for him to go to bed, he was a little wound up, and so I tried to get him to calm down by talking to him.  "Joey, what do you think you'll dream about."

"Maybeeeee.....maybe I dream I'm a knight. I ride a horse.  No! Maybeeee....a dinosaur?  No! No! I dream I'm a bat. I fly! I big, big bat! See?" And, with that, he started flapping his arms and jumping up and down on his bed.  Erm, yes, I see.

On the way out of the petting zoo, Alex looked up and noticed a very funny tree:

It's not the first of these binky trees that we've seen in Zürich, a place for kids to ceremonially tie their pacifiers when they're ready to give them up. I think it's such a cute tradition, though.

We did manage to see a few more animals on the way out, between all of the playgrounds, including some of the most active bears I've ever seen in a zoo.

All that stomping around the zoo exhausted the kids thoroughly: I gave them their dinners early, and they were in their pjs by 6:30.

And that was a wonderful thing, because I got a surprise call from Susannah, saying that she, unexpectedly, had a free night.  So she and I got to take advantage of the reduced cinema prices on Mondays: for a mere 15 CHF, we got to see Harry Potter, and in 3-D.  With German and French subtitles, no less.

The Neverending Story

And, before the movie started, in the adjacent mall, I managed to track down a book I'd been wanting to get Dennis as a gift, another favorite fantasy story, and in the original German...