Oooops. The goal was to get up at seven thirty, to have breakfast at eight, but I mismanaged my phone alarm and it goes off at six thirty. You would think, okay, just turn over and go back to sleep, but no, we only noticed when it was almost seven. Might as well stay awake, then.
We wrap up our stay here with a better breakfast than yesterday, though they’re still struggling to get food to the buffet table in a timely fashion. At least we have a nice view of the Our river while we wait, it’s blanketed by a thick fog and gives out a very autumny vibe. The croissants really are delicious, it makes up for the lack of other options.
Out by nine, driving through the foggy forest. We have to resort to downloaded playlists, I suppose the fog is blocking some of the cell phone signal, spotty here even in the best of circumstances. ETA is eleven and we make it without too much traffic or road works. We follow the signs to the resort parking and check into the park. Pairi Daiza is not the oldest animal park in Belgium, but it’s the most popular and probably the biggest at seventy five hectares. We’ve been coming here for ages, when it was still called Paradisio, but it has changed a lot over the years, extending the grounds with new animal enclosures and new buildings.
Since a few years you can sleep here as well, inside the park, and that’s what we’ve booked for tonight. The last time we were here was right before/during a COVID lockdown in November 2020. The park had to close on 31 October, but the hotels remained open until 2 November, so we spent the whole of 1 November in the park with nobody but the hotel guests.
We drop off the luggage at the entrance – it will be taken to our room – and head into the park. The nice thing about staying the night is that you have two days to visit the whole thing, it’s much more relaxing this way. We enjoy the landscaping (many Acer palmatum specimens displaying gorgeous fall colours), the animals and even read the educational info now and then.
I know some people who feel that animal parks are evil because they lock up animals who should be out and free, but these places do very valuable work on studying species, reintroducing them into their natural habitats and breeding them in captivity to make sure there is a stable and diverse population in parks, when the numbers of free roaming individuals are dwindling. The fact that they’re blatantly commercial at the same time has some advantages, like decent catering and clean facilities, but also disadvantages, like the Halloween decorations and show plans being set up for tomorrow.
In any case, we have a wonderful and relaxing time. Arne has to drag me away from the panda’s (both the chinese black/white ones and the red ones) and we spend an inordinate time staring at trees (bonsai!) instead of animals, but that’s just how we like it. No pictures for the blog post though, I’ve reached my six GB limit on WordPress storage and must deliberate what to do.. get a more expensive monthly plan? Start archiving trips? Downgrade the quality of the photos..? I don’t like any of these ideas.
We’ll spend most of tomorrow in the park as well, then head home and get back to into the usual work week rhythm.
Febe writes 