A winter visit to the Eifelpark at Gondorf Germany

Turning 6...that's worth more than an ordinary weekly walk in the woods around the village, right? So we crossed the border and ventured into the beautiful Eifel area near Bittburg.  We drove to Gondorf to visit the Eifelpark, which is an amusement/wild park.  In the wintertime, only the animals can be visited and some playgrounds but the entire amusement park area is closed. Obviously, prices are adapted, so it's not very expensive to get entrance.  (but it's not free!). 

I must admit that it felt a bit desolate to walk along all the closed attractions. Even the facilities such as toilets are almost all closed, except for one.  Fortunately, we were well aware that there would be no restaurants or snackbars open either, so we had brought our picnic.  Basically, there only personnel you can spot is at the entrance and construction workers that were busy with a lot of maintenance and improvement projects.  

The children discovered the playground first and that one is quite well done and large with different theme that triggered their imagination : pirates, cowboys, ... We spent quite some time at the start and end of our visit here. 

We also strolled along the petting zoo before we started our walk along the bigger animal area's. 

But then we started the 2km walkway across the valley through the woods in order to spot the wildlife. As with other Eifel animal parks we've visited before, only animals natural to European woods live here: multiple types of deer, goats, wolves, etc... You can pass through wildlife gates and walk among the woods where the animals are free to roam around.   You can get some food at the entrance and some tame ones venture out and approach to get some snacks while other animals just observe from a distance (or keep hiding invisible to our eye). 

You do not get to walk across the Lynx enclosure, neither the wolves

In Summer there are also birds of prey shows but now they were all in vacation mood too, just chilling in the sun. 

We picniced on the many deserted tables of the food court, nearby the closed attractions.  Even the garbage bins were closed off! 

 

We quite enjoyed the visit although it is weird to be in a park that is 80% closed. There were only 10 cars in the parking lot: I think we crossed 5 families on the entire day or so.  I wonder how busy it would get in summer because we are quite tempted to try again when everything is open.  
In wintertime: if you are not close by it is probably not worthwhile to drive a long distance and pay entrance but if you are in the area, it's still nice to spend half a day here.