Artis Zoo is the oldest zoo in The Netherlands. It was built in the 1800's on the outskirts of the city and thanks to urban sprawl the Zoo today stands in the centre of the city. For Oma Eda's birthday the Family and i took her on a family outing. It was a lovely warm autumn day and the kids had the day of school. The zoo has undergone huge refurbishment but they original parts have been turned into a museum, an aquarium and a permanent Darwin exhibition.
before we started our wandering we stopped for lunch and i had a traditional dutch cuisine. PANKCAKES WITH BACON AND CHEESE :) my oh my i love living here haha.
we walked around looking at all the exhibits and laughing as i tried to pronounce the names of all the animals when we came upon my new favourite animal!!!
Next stop was the aquarium where i found this cool cat. i felt sorry for him cause the other fish wouldnt go near him :( poor lonely fish.
Also in the aquarium bulding was the darwin exhibit. it was quite interesting although a little unnerving. The exhibit mainly featured on the early stages of Charles Darwins theory of evoloution because when Artis zoo was first opened it was originally plagued by artists sketching the animals but also by scientist and intellectuals attempting to learn more about the animal kingdom. the zoo'z primary function was actually as a place of learning with its huge libraries and study centres as well as a hall that was used for lectures and the odd shindig haha.
On a happier note haha by far the best part of the day was when we went to the girraffee exhibit. at first i was quite annoyed because it was feeding time and the girraffes left to go into a separate part of the exhibit. but then i discovered that i could go and watch them AND oh my god, i was so close i could have given the baby girraffe a butterfly kiss! i wanted to reach out and stroke his chest so badly. but i didnt because i knew it would scare him. gosh they were amazing! i was quite proud of my self restraint haha.
