Adventures in the Country of Hungary

This guy looks pretty comfortable sleeping!

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…
Nellie the elephant packed her trunk and
said goodbye to the circus
Off she rode with a trumpety trump
trump trump trump

Nellie the elephant packed her trunk
and trumbled off to the jungle
off she rode with a trumpety trump
trump trump trump

(Nellie the Elephant by The Toy Dolls)

Jamie and I decided to take advantage of a sunny Saturday and go to the Budapest Zoo. Too bad that sun doesn’t necessarily mean warmth. The zoo is actually pretty close to us, seeing as how we are near to the Varosliget (City Park), which happens to also be home to the zoo. Now, I, like many people out there, don’t appreciate seeing animals locked up in cages. However, I have to say that most of the animals seemed pretty happy to be there. The zoo was a pretty big place, so we had a lot of ground to cover!

Seeing as how it was still cold out, and the fact that it was breakfast time, many of the animals were inside smaller enclosures eating a delicious meal. We had the chance to be especially close to the rhinos and hippos. Speaking of hippos, we walked into a very Middle Eastern-esque building, and as we turn the corner, we hear a loud SPLASH and caught some water spritzing into the air. We were literally two feet away from two hippos locked inside to avoid the cold weather. They were beautiful creatures, happily swimming in their unfortunately cramped quarters.

Very cool building, home to the hippos

We were THIS close to the hippos

After the incident in San Francisco with the tiger jumping out of her enclosure, it was a pleasant surprise to be able to get so close to some of the animals. We felt entirely safe walking throughout the zoo, admiring the different architecture and

Jamie feeding an elephant!

feel throughout the zoo. Jamie and I even fed some elephants. As one of the trainers was carrying a bucket of apples outside, one of the elephants stretched their trunk through the fence and snatched an apple before the trainer could snap at the big guy. Jamie and I braved the elephant feeding, which seemed more like vacuums as they sucked up their apples and carrots from us.

Jamie decided to feed her sweater to a baby goat

I wonder who that foot belongs to?

While we didn’t see any butterflies or penguins this time around, we spent quite some time in the gorilla enclosure admiring a mother and a recently born baby gorilla. It was definitely the highlight of the day, as the little tyke clung on to mom while she meandered through the enclosure, looking for a place to sleep.

Our new washing machine!

Next to the gorillas were some orangutans, which was the perfect way to end the day. One of the orangutans was playing with a pink bucket full of water. After splashing it around for a while, he grabbed a shirt and began to wash it!

If only we had him doing our laundry! He would wash it, squeeze it, try it on for size, rinse, lather, and repeat!

This rhino's got an appetite!

After carrying the water around for a while, he accidentally knocked it all over and decided to put the bucket on his head instead. With his lack of vision, the orangutan swung himself right into the glass. After a while, he took the bucket off, and started licking the glass. With that, we knew it was time to go, and so ended our day at the Budapest Allatkert!