Sleeping in the animal park has the advantage of being allowed in it earlier/later than the day visitors. The resort area in the west has – aside from the hotel rooms and cottages – black bears, gray wolves, beavers, .. and it’s open all night. The rest of the park is open to resort guests from nine, whereas day visitors are only allowed in at ten.
During the excellent buffet yesterday evening, Arne and I planned how to best take advantage of that fact, while at the same time avoiding the loud kids at the breakfast buffet. Our best guess is: early breakfast (seven thirty), pack and walk out (luggage will be available when we check-out later) and start with the areas closest to the entrance. Hopefully we’ll be ahead of the mass when they come in.
Alarm at seven, the buffet is still pretty quiet. We’re out by eight thirty, just in time to see the feeding of the black bears. They have a huge enclosure, but they’re pretty eager (or hungry, I suppose) and so they come over to the promenade from where the park ranger is throwing them their daily allowance. In the background is an orchestral soundtrack of dramatic Halloween music, though they snuck in some remixes of Christmas themes as well! We continue on, first visiting the birds of prey, then the old monastery walled garden, .. It’s delightful walking around almost by ourselves. When the park opens at ten, we start our final big tour, to visit some animals we didn’t see yesterday. We can now also admire the result of yesterday’s decoration efforts. There’s masses of chrysanthemums, pumpkins all over and themed statuary. We manage to avoid the live performances, maybe that’s why it’s so quiet everywhere else!
After a cold lunch (a sandwich on a bench outside) and a final look at the panda’s, we decide to call it a day. The entrance/exit hall has shopping mall dreams and includes scent dispensers as well as actors in Halloween costumes, occasionally breaking out in dramatic dance, it’s a bit surreal. We buy a Pairi Daiza rose plant as a memento and drive away around two, wrapping up our celebration weekend. It was properly nostalgic and romantic, neatly combining old favorites like the Air album and the hotel/restaurant we had visited before, with new hobbies like visiting the arboretum. Still no extra picture storage on WordPress though!
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