Plankendael Zoo

We live in Leuven at only 25 min from the 2nd nicest zoo in Belgium   (I think Pairi Daiza's park is still a bit nicer) but I have only been there once before in my life. Quite a shame, don't you think? So we intend to change that and we bought an annual season ticket today.

Plankendael is linked to the oldest and official zoo of Belgium which is located in Antwerp but here they have a much bigger park with fun playgrounds and much nicer displays of the animals. They can often boast new baby's in the park e.g. the little rinoceros that was born at the end of 2015, a baby elephant last summer and just last month a few baby lions and a baby Bonobo.  We have not seen the latter. 

We were welcomed by the many storks that live freely in and around the park . We met up with Kabouter's best friend, whose family conveniently have annual season tickets too.

Mommy and baby rinoceros

The boys were happy to be reunited after Kabouter started school.  Much to our surprise they started walking/running adorably hand in hand. "Handje pakken". Oooooh cuteness overload! 

The little friend who knows Plankendael well, took the lead in showing us around and we all happily followed. The nice thing about a season pass is that you don't feel pressure anymore to see everything...we'll just hop by for a short visit another time when we want it.

Beertje got help getting pushed around by the older boys and he seemed to enjoy it very well, dreaming of all the animals he didn't see himself.

Highlight was probably the pinguins that were unexpectedly taking a walk on the trail and almost bumped into the 2 boys.  They both squeezed the mother's hand very hard as they were quite nervous about the animal all of a sudden being so close-by without any fence.

We were lucky that most of the nasty April showers stayed away while we were out in the park and when we were shielded from the icy wind, it was in fact very lovely to sit outside all together.

So if there's any readers with a season's pass...give a shout and we might join you another time at the Zoo.