Our Trip to the Zoo (A post long over due!)

Even though we went to the zoo the day after the Lantern Festival, I am just getting around to posting about it now. Life has been very busy for us, although I am not exactly sure with what... I do apologize for the delay. So on with the Seoul Zoo!

So Friday November 11th we spent the day at Seoul Zoo. Seoul Zoo is one of the attractions in Seoul Grand Park. We had been there before when we went to Seoul Land. There is also a Science Museum and an Exhibit Hall on site. To get to the Zoo we decided to take the subway since there is a stop at Seoul Grand Park. We went from never having ridden the subway to riding twice in 2 days. It really is an easy way to get places though! Seoul Grand Park is a huge place, so when you get there that's only half the battle, you still need to hike to the point of interest in which you going. And the zoo is up hill!!! But at least its a scenic walk where you can see the sky ride, Seoul Land in the distance and some lovely mountains. However one of the very first things you are greeted by are the vendors selling their "street food". I am generally a fan of street food with the exception of the tiny boiled snails and the boiled silk worms! I wish I could describe the smell, but you are all better off if you never smell that one!!! The Koreans eat these things like popcorn, but I never intend to try that myself. However they also had these sugar coated doughnut like things that were very good!

Street food vendor, there were at least 6 of them with exactly the same stuff.

Snails on the left, silk worms on the right. The picture makes me want to gag!!!

Quick pit stop for a beverage!

Beautiful Mountains surround Seoul Grand Park.

Still not to the entrance yet...

This is one of the "Sky Lifts" and Seoul Land is in the background.

Reminds me of home!

Finally at the entrance!

Giant Tiger outside the entrance.

I know I have said this before, but the people here just love our children! I mean its like we have a neon sign above us at all times that says, "American Children Here!!!!" I turned around from taking the above picture and saw a mob of Korean School girls all over Rhyon!

Rhyon's Admirers!

 Entrance into the Seoul Zoo is actually free, except for the dolphin show which was only a few thousand won for the adults. Once we made it through the entrance gate we collected our map. They had a nice variety of them including English! Not 5 seconds later, Giulianna and I are reading the map and we are suddenly swarmed by another group of young girls. They spoke pretty good English and asked where we were from, and then asked to take Giu's picture. So I said sure and this girl whips out this huge camera with a huge lens on it and proceeds to take Giulianna's picture. It was like a mini photo shoot! Thankfully this was the last swarm of the day, but we got looks everywhere we went, and some free cookies and nectarines from people on the subway ride home!

Little Navigator, everywhere we go she must have her own map!

Giu in front of the giant Otter statue.

This one is for Mike and Doug who found it rather amusing that there was a Drug Store in the Zoo. Interesting don't you think?!

Cool graffitti wall that took you up to an over look where you could view African Animals.

Giraffe Exhibit

Nice Hat!!!

Rhyon Loved watching the animals. I took a video of him telling me all about it.

Giraffe habitat with mountains in the background.

One of the coolest things at the zoo was next, the Kangaroos! Now I have seen many Kangaroos in my day at zoos and even the circus, I have held and fed baby wallabies and I have even eaten Kangaroo, but this was so cool it is number one on my "Roo" list. We walked down this path and up to the Grey Kangaroo enclosure and as soon as they saw us they came hopping over. I don't know if it was the kids, the stroller, or what but 3 came right up to the fence. I know that I shouldn't do these things but I reached out and touched them anyway. The kids got a really cool up close look at them too. One was a Mom and had a pretty big Joey in her pouch. After we had spent quite a long time with the Grey Kangaroos we moved on down the path, but the Mom with the Joey followed us. The next enclosure had the big Red Kangaroo in it. These are the ones that can been seen boxing and can be dangerous if threatened. But this big male also came hopping right over to see us. He stopped and checked out his cousins in the neighboring enclosure as well and then sauntered away. It was amazing! And now I have to over load you all with pictures....

Hopping our way!

Checking us out.

Look at Rhyon's face, he was so excited!

I love the Joey! How cool is that!!!!

I couldn't resist...

Me and the Roo!!!

Look kids isn't this cool!

That would be Giulianna, learning bad things from Mommy!

Big Red.

Checking us out too

Cool side by side size comparison that you don't usually get.

They couldn't get enough Roo!!!!

The next thing we saw at the Zoo was the Insectarium. They had some neat stuff and really nice exhibits. As you walked through things were giant so you would feel big sized. They had some very interesting Asian Water bugs that would make anyone want to avoid the water. There was a meal worm touch tank, stag beetle grubs and a green house full of cool looking frogs.

Giant spicket

Mike wouldn't touch the worms...

Beetle grubs as big as my finger, eww!

We had to rush out of there and to the Dolphin stage for our show. We were about 5 minutes late for the show but it was OK. The theater wasn't as close as the map showed, it was up hill and Giulianna walks pretty slow.  The show was pretty good, they started with a sea lion chasing a burglar. The funny thing was that the music they used was in English such as Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog", but they all spoke Korean. I find that pretty silly, seems to me they should use Korean Music. Anyway, after the sea lion they had 5 dolphins.Only 4 of the dolphins performed though, one was much smaller and must have been a baby in training. Now I have no problem with animals in captivity and using them for shows and such, but I truly believe they need to have regulations on how much space is required for these things. The space of this tank was WAY to small for all these dolphins, especially for them to perform in! I was afraid the whole time that one would miss a mark and hit the stage! Other than that the show was pretty good. The kids loved it. Rhyon watched in awe the whole time!

A view of the theater

Dolphin tricks

Dancing!

The next thing we did at the zoo was go up and see Peafowl Village and the bears. To my dismay, no polar bears. But they did have a sun bear which was rather cool because you don't typically see them in zoos in the United States. Right next to the sun bears were the red pandas. Red pandas are not bears, just as pandas are not bears, so I am unsure why they were grouped together. 

Sign showing pandas as bears.

Sun Bear

That is one very cool looking bear!

 After the bears we saw some Cougars, who eyed up the children for lunch. They had tigers, leopards, fisher cats and raccoons! I can not think of a zoo that I have been too that has had raccoons. Of course they were doing what they do best and begging for food, which some Korean folks were happy to give them. Raccoons are so cool, and seeing them took me back to when I was little and my parents would rehab them in our house. I really miss that. They also had coaties, coyotes and 2 kinds of wolves.

"Hey those kids look like lunch!"

A white tiger on loan from Russia. Very rare to see, and so close, nothing but these bars an a some shrubbery between us!

Ah nap time!

Fisher Cat

Coons will eat anything!

Its a coatie! I will admit, I touched his nose!

Checking out the coyotes.

Rhyon was so happy to be out of the stroller he was singing while he walked!

There was one critter in particular that I need to talk about. I had never seen this animal before nor heard of it. He was such a cute little guy. It was called a raccoon dog. It looked kinda like a little arctic fox. They are native to Asia. I really don't know anything about these creatures, guess I will have to learn...

So all of that and it wasn't even half of the zoo! They had a really cool ape house, a rainforest type exhibit, this huge green house, a nocturnal house, lions, seals and sea lions, African hoof-stock, Rhinos, cheetahs, tons of various birds and more.  We were there all day and there were things we didn't see. I must add this zoo actually has its own bus. Yes it is so big that you can take a bus to get around it. And I mean a bus, not a cute little trolley or something, a full size passenger bus! 

Out side of the building.

Primate house, there was an alley with plants between the cages, very cool setup.

Rhyon liked the gibbon, they were checking each other out.

Really nice big indoor enclosures.

Our attempt at a family picture.

Art Garden in foreground, huge green house in background.

TV Art. Its recycled!

Big Lion playing with his toy.

Lion enclosure. There were 10 male lions in it. That was very weird!

The Zoo Bus

One thing we did do while we were there was stop and have lunch. Now if you expect to find a burger to eat here good luck! All the food options were Korean. They make everything to order too, its not really "fast food". That takes some getting used to. I will say the food was really good, especially the soup since it was a cool day. And if you are really feeling wild, forget cotton candy or popcorn, you can get your self a nice freshly grilled octopus. (Sorry no picture of that one.)

It was a really great day. On our way out Giulianna played on 2 really cool playgrounds. One was a dinosaur and the other a huge elephant head where you slid down the trunk. She had a blast but was very tired for the trip home. I don't blame her, I was tired and walked just as far as she did. It was a great couple days of adventure. The rest of that weekend however was spent at home not doing much. Mike got stuck doing an overnight shift at work so we didn't go anywhere Saturday or Sunday. Well that is except for me, Saturday night I went to a friends house for a party and Doug came to babysit the kids while I was gone. The kids loved that, and were thankfully very good for him. He even volunteered to do it again!

Coolest Playground ever!