The Stuttgart Zoo!

In Stuttgart the tourist baureau has a discount ticket you can buy called the Stuttcard (cute little play on words). It includes 3 days of unlimited metro rides and free or discounted admission to several of the museums, plus free food and coffee. On our way to the m-punkt (tourist beaureau) which was only about a 20 minute walk from the hotel we passed the Rathaus or Town Hall. Above is Shaelyn pictured in front of Town Hall.

The Zoo is actual an arboretum, an aquarium and a zoo. We saw some pretty strange plants in the arboretum including the climbing cactus pictured below. Weird Huh? They also had the beautiful blue flowers whose name escapes me.


They had a cool little orange grove with all kinds of different oranges from around the world. Did you know that oranges originated in China and are not native to the States? I didn't know that. You learn something new every day. They even had banana trees. Who knew you could grow a banana tree indoors?






The aquarium was much smaller than the aquariums that we have in DC or Chicago but it was a nice little aquarium with some cool looking fish. Shaelyn enjoyed it and that's really all that matters. I enjoyed it to just not in the same way a 6 year old does. She took pictures of everything. Everything tank and every sign had it's picture taken. They had the normal fish plus a few cool things like the giant lung fish pictured below. I didn't know that lung fish got so large. Just in case you are wondering a lung fish really does have lungs. It can breath out of water for a number of years if need be. It's meant to strive in areas with long periods of draught.

Of course, being a Zoo they had a lot of the same things that we have at zoos here. One of the coolest things that they had were a bunch of baby gorilla's. The video and pictures below will show you just how young they are. Shaelyn loved them. She found the zoo keepers playing with the animals the coolest thing in the world. I did also. It's not everyday that you get to see person playing with a baby gorilla.

After we saw the fish we went and looked at the rest of the animals. It took us all day to go through the zoo. We ate at he zoo restaurant and it was really, really good. I would go back there if it was closer! The rest of the pictures below show the rest of our zoo visit.

Oranges and a Tucan

Jellyfish

Tapir

Plant House