A Day at the Zoo

The Wroclaw Zoo, which turns 150 this year, offers a special senior citizen (yours truly) rate on Thursday (75% off). So Kathy and I got up early, walked along the turn-of-the-century Wroclaw Promenade on the river to the Mieczarnia Youth Hostel and Cafe where we had breakfast.

By 9:00 AM we were on a tram on our way to the zoo. The first thing we saw were the lion and bear exhibits. The zoo was relatively uncrowded (except for several groups of school-children) and it was really peaceful just strolling around looking at the exhibits. Notice the Jurassic Park-like enclosure for the brown bears.

In the lion exhibit they have the front part of a safari jeep intruding into the enclosure so you can get close and feel like you're right next to the lions. That was a hit with the kids. Next, we went to the aquarium and terrarium exhibits. The terrarium had a walk-through butterfly exhibit with hundreds of butterflies flitting about. There were also frogs, snakes and lizards, like this guy here.

In the smaller aquarium, there were various species of fresh-water fish, including the ugliest fish I've ever seen. This guy could give the gnomes of Wroclaw a run for their money.

After lunch, we headed over to the African section and saw the rhinos. The one rhino here is just sleeping, while the other is resting its head on the first rhino's nose.

There were some tigers, but they insisted in laying in the grass. We also saw the giraffes, the elephants, some monkeys and one very nasty crocodile.

By this time we were pretty tired so we finished up in the African aquarium, which, like the aquariums in Monterrey or Long Beach, feature a tunnel that goes under the water so you can see sharks and stingrays swimming all around you. Very cool (but the kids were really excited and loud).

By 3:30 we were pretty much done. We caught the tram back to our hotel. We're planning a nice dinner tonight, but we have to be up early to catch the 8:30 AM bus to Prague.