Berlin Aquarium

One of the kids' favourite places in Berlin is the Berlin zoo and aquarium. They're very reasonably priced, and are such a guarantee of hours of fun that we're saving our pennies to buy an annual family ticket to the zoo. Even still, that's only 180€ (which is quite a bargain considering an annual family ticket to a certain zoo in Australia currently costs between $425 and $920!). Or the utterly ridiculous Sea Life and AquaDom here in Berlin, about which I left a scathing review. Over forty euros admission without taking my husband with me, they charged for Maddyn (nowhere else seems to charge entry for three year-olds, and the zoo will let him in for free until he's five!) and not even a discount despite having less than half the sea creatures the aquarium does, nor that their current building project means some of their exhibits are closed. There are no words for how displeased I was with the entire experience, but I digress. Back to the excellence of the cheaper and far more enjoyable alternative.

Tangential has been working very hard recently and in exchange for a hectic week that saw him coming home at 9.30 one night and midnight another--and even working on Saturday--he scored a day in lieu. Maddyn's been missing his dad dreadfully, so the boys and I headed out to the aquarium.

Maddyn's favourite part of the aquarium is the snakes. On our first visit he sat down next to the giant snake at the top of the main staircase and just watched the one enclosure for twenty minutes. He also loves the giant enclosure of caymans and slider turtles--you can choose to either watch them from a bridge that spans the enclosure or from another floor up, on the floor with the insects and arachnids. He's also a very big fan of the shark tank and the large reef tank that sits in the middle of a lovely chamber of sorts with seats if you fancy a sit down after walking through three floors of aquarium.

There's a back door that takes you from the aquarium into the zoo. We've probably spent ten hours in the zoo so far and we haven't seen a fraction of it. We didn't go this week, but the kids love it there (hence our plan to buy annual tickets). There's even a three-part playground, which was legendary even in winter when we found it deserted and dusted with snow. Alas with our move and our recent exploring most of our photos were taken back when we were in Mitte with sketchy wireless so I don't have the photos handy, but I can't rave enough about how much fun we've had at the zoo.