I have mixed feelings about zoos, but I do visit them. Prague Zoo is a pretty good one, too, by and large. The giraffes, zebras and a few other savannah type animals have a pretty good sized meadow to graze on. The mountain goats have an excellent rock scrabble hillside. Monkey Island is pretty cool, the Indonesian Pavilion is kind of awesome, with the bats flying around over your head.
Always One of My Favorite Exhibits
I always feel sorry for the polar bears, though, and the elephants. Their conditions are pretty crappy.
Anyway, we had nothing at all planned for this weekend, which is pretty unusual, so when the wife suggested the zoo, we were off. There was one little problem. The kids have bicycles, my wife has a bicycle, I don’t have a bicycle.
Fortunately, there is this deal in Prague where you can pick up a bike at certain locations and drop it off back there or someplace else, you sign up and get a card or something, and the rental is really cheap, if it’s a short trip, I think under an hour, it’s free, and even an all day rental is reasonable.
I also didn’t have a card, but fortunately you can do the sign-up online and you don’t really need the card, just type in the pin number and you’re off to the races.
Prague is so cool. Every city should have something like that.
The bikes are nothing elegant; big, ugly, clunky, matte green, girls’ bikes with a big bar that looks like a basket except it’s open at the sides and a spike on the front that makes the whole system work, sort of like a line of shopping carts.
Still, it was a lot of fun. I haven’t been on a bicycle for a while, and from our house to the zoo is a lovely ride. It starts in that area next to the river, north of the center, which used to be all warehouses and junkyards, and some day will no doubt be high rises and luxury apartment complexes, but for now is scrubby grassland with a dirt path running through it, you go past a putting green and under Libensky Most, then you’ve got a neighborhood of urban gardens on the left, little islands of tranquillity, I’d love to have a patch like that but they are not cheap, and on the right there’s a weird garden of sports statues behind a building that I’ve never seen anybody go into or out of. Then you come to the dam, it’s not actually on the river, it’s a backwater, and the neighborhood around it is also in that transitional stage between dereliction and smooth, modern urbanity. After that the path is along the river the whole way. We stopped for a snack next to the kayak course, and sat and watched the serious athletes train and the crews of fat, middle aged guys playing bump cars in their rubber rafts.
The zoo was more expensive than it was last time but just as crowded. More expensive than taking the whole family to a movie.
I was, however, quite pleased to see that they’re working on a new, much larger enclosure for the elephants.
The kids liked the snakes best. I really, really don’t understand that.
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