Budapest Zoo
Today was a nice warm day, so we went to the Budapest Zoo! The zoo is located in the upper part of Városliget, which is the city park. We walked through Hero’s Square to get here, and although I had been here before (see my pictures from when we went to the art museum) it was everyone else’s first time to walk through the Square when there wasn’t a bunch of scaffolding or barriers. From there it was a short walk north to the zoo.
We have heard a lot of great things about this zoo, so we were excited to go. We saw lots of cool animals and many of them were a lot more active than animals we have seen at other zoos. However, the zoo was a bit run down and could have used renovations and cleaning. A lot of the areas were closed, and others were dirty and dusty (and spider webs!), weeds, high grass, and leaves covered some areas, and several of the animal pens just looked sad and uninviting.
One of the first animals we saw was a sloth, who was actually moving around! He was so cute, and I tried to get better pictures but the fence kept the camera from focusing correctly. The sloth climbed up and down, looked at us several times, and then hung completely upside down to eat. I could have stayed and watched him longer, but since he was one of the first animals we saw we had to move along. Ronin saw this giant lizard and had a staring contest (he lost), and we saw some of the biggest river otters I have ever seen! They weren’t swimming but just lounging around, but one was wet so he was probably just drying off. There was a big prairie dog pen where there were a whole bunch of prairie dogs. You could walk around the entire pen, but the prairie dogs would get skittish when the kids got too close and then they would move away from the glass.
There was an Australian area where we got to walk through a path with no fences. Zoey and Ronin each got really close to some wallabies! There was a walkway beside some emus, and I was a little nervous walking by since there was nothing preventing the emus from leaning over and pecking you! You can see how close we got to them.
There was a bat house where we walked in and the bats were just flying around free! There were dozens of them, and one crawled up a chain not two feet away from my head. This was one of the coolest and creepiest experiences I have had here in Budapest. Next we saw the lions, which were laying down pretty close to the front of the glass. There was also a wooden lion statue which Willow especially loved. There was a polar bear standing really close up on his rock above his water tank, but he looked really sad. He was really skinny and was foaming around his mouth. We walked by him several times throughout the day and he never moved from this spot, although he moved his head back and forth. The red pandas are JonPaul’s favorite zoo animal (because they don’t have dragons in the zoo), and we saw the red panda walking around his habitat, although he was a little farther away.
The tigers were walking back and forth right next to the glass! All the kids thought this was super cool, but the tigers looked pretty skinny just like the polar bear. I really liked the elephants, and there was even a little baby elephant! The baby picked up a stick with his trunk and was poking at the tree trunk and at the ground with it, which was cute. This is the first time I think I have seen hippos at the zoo (at least that I can remember), and Ronin was super excited because these are his favorite animals. They were under the water with just their backs showing most of the time, but poked their heads up a couple times, which made Ronin cheer each time. There were statues to take pictures with all over, and one was a big spider—here is Ronin conquering the spider. Another was a giant lizard, which Willow thought was neat, even though I wouldn’t let her climb up there to sit on it. Toward the end of our trip we saw the orangutans, who were putting on a show for us. This one took a piece of fabric, climbed up the mesh gate and stuck the fabric through a hook up on the wall so he could hang from it. He then picked up a pile of straw, climbed back up the gate, and swung from the fabric a few times before throwing the straw in the air and then falling on the bed of straw on the floor. It was hilarious and really shows how intelligent and ingenious these animals are.
Finally, we went to the seal enclosure to watch the show of the seal working with his trainer. This was really fun, and the seal did lots of tricks and jumps. The kids were standing right in front and had a great view. Willow was particularly excited and was clapping and cheering almost the entire time.
Overall, I would totally recommend the Budapest Zoo. However, if the animals were not so active and so easy to see it would have been a lot less spectacular. Like I said before, a lot of it was run down and needed cleaning or renovation. We still had fun, and the kids loved getting to see some of their favorite animals.
