Love is in the air…

If we had any doubts about the arrival of spring, they were quickly cast aside today when we arrived at the Heidelberg Zoo. There’s a bear exhibit outside the zoo that featured mama an papa bear engaged in a lively wrestling match (as we explained to the kids). This sport seemed to be all the rage there today as we discovered at the tiger exhibit. Twice. When Paul Simon wrote the lyric "it's all happening at the zoo", he was spot on.

B has dared me to post the pictures I couldn’t resist taking. In the interest of maintaining some level of discretion in this blog, I’ve posted them here. Come on, click. You know you want to see them. To cleanse the visual palette, I've posted the G-rated pictures here.

By the way, I took the day off today. As Friday and Monday are public holidays, I get 5 days off in a row for the price of 1. That’s the kind of math I like.

The Heidelberg Zoo isn’t particularly large and doesn’t seem to have an exotic collection of animals, but it is extremely well designed, somehow getting its guests closer to its residents than any other zoo I can remember (as the pictures below will attest – I don’t have a powerful zoom lens). We arrived early, which turned out to have been a good idea. By 11:30 or so, the place was filling up and the animals were retreating into parts of their enclosures where they wouldn’t be gawked at by roaming bands of shaved apes.

After a few hours at the zoo, we were famished. We packed everyone into the Chrysler minibus and headed to Speyer. As followers of this blog know, Speyer is one of the coolest German cities around. Today we decided to explore the riverfront area: Speyer is on the Rhein. We had seen signs for the aquarium there on previous visits but had never gone.

After arriving and parking on the street in front of the aquarium, we walked along the river and had lunch at a quaint biergarten. We started off with calamari for the older set and French fries for the kids. B and I then split a plate with steak, lamb and pork. The kids split a plate of pasta while Sandra (visiting nanny) had “fish fingers”. All in all, not bad grub. The view was the highlight of the meal though.
As you can see below, French river cruises stop in Speyer. I’d like to check into these cruises as they seem like a relaxing way to see some nice cities and scenery. The extremely long, skinny boats were registered in Strasbourg, another city we love.
After lunch, we headed to the aquarium where we laid out over 50 Euros for a so-so experience. This aquarium doesn’t come close to the one in Seattle, but I’m glad we went. For anyone thinking about going, I would recommend you do everything else in Speyer first. I would not pay to go to the aquarium again.

After the aquarium, we headed home. I slept off the Hefeweitzens I drank at lunch while B went to the store to buy stuff for the Good Friday lunch she and Sandra will cook up tomorrow for some friends (Thomas, Luciana and their kids) and us.

Finally, the award for the funniest street sign I’ve seen goes to the comical warning below found on a dead-end, narrow spit of land one ends up on if you drive past the aquarium. How many people do you think drove into the drink before they paid a graphic artist to conceive this masterpiece?