Hamburg Day Five...

Our fifth day already. But I was saying to The Man that it hasn't gone by in a rush. So it does feel as though we are having good holiday.

So what did we get up to today. We went to the Hagenbeck Tierpark, the zoo yo you. In amongst the brochures we collected at the hotel desk was a leaflet about the zoo, with pictures of walrus and polar bear on the cover. Well we just have to go and see those. It was something we were planning to do yesterday afternoon, and boy are we glad we gave it almost a whole day.

Again it was very easy to get to by train, transferring only once to get us onto he right line. Hamburg is nowhere near as busy as London, even in rush hour, quite civilised really.

So there we were at 1000 right on opening time, and so were several school and pre school groups. If my German had been good enough I would have mad a comment to the person selling us tickets that we didn't appear to have the obligatory child in tow.

Pocket lighter and tickets in hand we followed our noses tot he elephant enclosure. I was a little dismayed to see them in such a small space, but relieved later when we came across them again all roaming outside in a good amount of space, and I got to hand feed one of them.

It is hard to describe all the animals we saw without just writing a list of them, suffice it to say we saw lots and lots of four legged critters.

I've been able to tick two more things off the wish-list, seeing live walrus and live polar bears.

We saw lions and tigers and bears and flamingo and pelican to name but a few common ones. The tapir and capibarra and porcupine to name so not so common ones.

We sat and had our lunch near the Llama enclosure hoping that they wouldn't spit at us, and they didn't.

Animals seen, we followed the signs to the aquarium and tropical haus.

We expected to see all manner of warm water fish, and were not disappointed. But the first animals we saw were ring tailed lemurs, looking just as cute as they do in pictures There were tiny spotted blue frogs, seemingly unnaturally coloured bright green chameleons, snakes and lizards too and crocodiles. What we were surprised to see was a colony of leaf cutter ants, doing their thing and carrying their portion of leaf like a banner back to their nest.

For us the grand finale was a huge marine tank, with its curved convex plastic wall, affording unimpeded views of the black tipped reef sharks, rays, bat fish and many more.

And what was on the TV when we turned it on this evening? A programmed about the very same zoo we had visited today. Not that we understood much about what they were saying, but who needs words.