Pairi Daiza

We could not be luckier to be so close to the zoo, Pairi Daiza. It is absolutely amazing! Two of my son's favorite attractions are the large indoor playground and the even larger outdoor playground. The indoor one is just around the corner from the front gate, so it's perfect on rainy days. We spent two hours there today just to get out of the house on this dreary day.
They have everything that most big zoos have in the U.S. with few of the safety precautions. It's so funny to see the differences in the two different countries. They have a bat exhibit here, underground, beneath the huge tower on the property. In the U.S. all the bats would be behind class, not so here. You walk into the exhibit, through some heavy plastic drapes and right into the bat cave. They are flying all over the place, close to the ground, near the screened entrance to the tower and right past your hair. You step in guano, they skim past your nose and you can touch their food if you are so inclined. Amazing and just a bit unnerving.
In their new Australia exhibit the kangaroos hop past you, if you get off the sidewalk, you could chase them. There are little monkeys darting around stealing your food and sitting on your head and pooping if they care to. They also have the world's largest opal and some ginormous geodes that are taller than I am.
One of their newer attractions are the giraffes...that you can feed. There's a big tree house that you can climb with limbs and branches that you can hold out to them and they'll eat right out of your hands. Giraffe tongues are really huge and kinda gross, but it's cool that they'll eat from your hand. Wouldn't see that in the states, well, I haven't yet anyway.
Two of the things that we haven't gotten to see are the raptor show and the elephant show. The raptor show displays their falcons and eagles and some of their talents. We've walked past the show when it's in progress, but haven't gotten to actually sit and watch. The elephant show puts you within 15 feet of the pool and they do a few tricks, including spraying the audience. We didn't even know there was an elephant show until the 5th time we were at the zoo.
Something else we discovered last time was the large ship they have that is full of endangered animals from the world. They have explanations about poaching and scalping that I'm sure are interesting, but we don't read or speak French or Dutch yet.
If furry animals aren't really your thing, you can walk through the many gardens they have expertly placed within the property. There's also a neat aquarium placed in the chateau on property. They have sharks, Nemo and Dori, but they also have something I've never seen before, nautilus. A mollusk that is snail like, and super cool. We got to watch one move today when we were there, by blowing water out it's something...
We haven's been for two weeks and my son and I have both missed it. It's open every day, rare in Belgium, until the middle of November. With school getting out early on Wednesdays in Belgium, I think I know where we'll be.