Day 28 Zurich

Great family day today. We spent the morning working on school work - the boys worked, Barb and I assisted. The afternoon, we spent at the Zurich Zoo. Our first few exhibits at the zoo left us feeling a bit disappointed and sad for the animals. The sea lions were in a tiny concrete pool that definitely needed some cleaning and the pygmy hippos were swimming in pools of their own filth - though from what I understand of pygmy hippos, it doesn't really bother them. As we continued deeper into the zoo we saw that some of it had been recently renovated. The zoo made an attempt to match the enclosure's surroundings to the animal's native habitat. There was a plethora of information about threats to the animals in the wild and how people could help. This was mostly in the big cat section. We all enjoyed watching three snow leopard kittens chasing and wrestling each other.

Further along there was a great deal of construction going on. We were impressed with the beginnings of a tibetan highland exhibit. On the far side of that there was an enormous African Savannah fairly close to completion. There were multiple viewing points on the hillside. We could just imagine the valley below teeming with herds of antelope and deer. But the highlight of the zoo was an enormous Thai village centered on the elephant enclosure.

The scope of the facility was difficult to capture on film. The layout was clever and clearly found a number of creative ways to balance the interests of the animals with great viewing for the visitors. Johnny discovered one of these when an elephant approached the window he was looking out of to grab some hay out of a trunk sized hole in the wall above the window. Johnny got a close up view of the elephant's mouth. After we left the zoo we stopped at the main train station where the city's Christmas decorations delighted us.

Inside the train station was a 40 foot tree covered in Swarovski crystal ornaments.

There was a Christmas market in the main hall of the train station. We sampled the deep fried apples which were excellent.

We returned to our hotel for a delicious meal - Barb and I had fondue, We loved the experience except that in attempting to adjust the temperature, we kept extinguishing the flame and needed to request the waitstaff to relight it.Throughout the last few days the boys have been asking a lot of questions about how Barb and I met, what our honeymoon was like, etc. Tonight the best question was, "How do you know when you find the right person?" Thanks to Martin Luther we have also had quite a few conversations about religion - both in general, and also specific to our family and traditions. It has been a joy to have these conversations and to deepen our family bonds.