This year Mother's Day was on a Saturday for me. (Kevin was in Oregon that weekend and on Sunday one of the boys had a basketball tournament all day). So we made an adventure of it one day early. The boys and I went to Paradisio, an hours' drive south into the French-speaking half of Belgium. Paradisio is a huge nature and animal park. A couple of the boys had been there for a school trip and raved about being a very cool place.
The first thing we did was to walk through the area with at least 20 large bird cages. There were so many types of birds with the
most vivid colors! Dozens of vibrant, rainbow-colored parakeets, bright yellow canaries, goofy-looking black and white birds that jumped from branch to branch in their cages. Bright pink flamingos burning red, pointy-billed birds, lapis colored ones, emerald green shimmery ones. We walked through a "tropical rainforest" enclosure with wildly colored birds. It was pretty amazing.
In the tropical bird enclosure area, there was an access to the rope bridge which traverses the park. It spans from one end to the other and has stops along the way with "Japanses-style" towers (Cameron's description) and stairs down into other areas of the park. When lots of people were walking on a section of the bridge, it really started bouncing. It was hard not to hold onto the sides to keep from loosing balance. The boys thought it was great and, of course, tried to make it shake as much a possible to jostle each other's balance. Thankfully the people in front of us were far enough in front of us that I don't think my guys caused them any harm. (No one yelled at us, at least.)
After passing out of the bird area the bridge lead us out over the japanese gardens. There was a river-like pond of koi swimming around and exotic birds roaming the edges of the water. Along the winding "river" was a Chinese-styled covered walkway, complete with pointed, curved ends on all the roof sections. It was covered with blue tiles and the woodwork was very stylized.
The first stop along the rope bridge was at the massive playground area. It had plenty of the standard playground fare - regular swings, tire swings, climbing walls, rope netting towers for climbing, and teter-toters.
And then there were things hadn't seen before - beyond seesaws. The had standing platforms the kids could stand on, and in addition to going up and down, they pivoted on the center stand!
The boys spent an hour or more running from one thing to another, pairing up to ride these balancing structures. There was an area for older kids with higher bars and more possibilities for really flying. There was also a climbing pole with a standing pad that would slide down if perfectly horizontal. But if the person standing on it pushed down with one foot to make it diagonal, then it would grab and not slide. It had a "handle" piece that did the same thing and, once he figured out how to make it work, Cameron was able to make it to the top of the pole. It was a tough challenge!
There were so many animals. The next ones we came across were the small climbing creatures. They were roaming freely in their areas, with no fences or bars to keep them away from us and vice versa. Once area looked like a safari camp" and there were a few very small monkeys climbing on and around the buildings and coming down to see if anyone had something tasty for them in their hands. Next was a lemur area, with a group of lemur mamas and babies hanging out in the shade of the bushes. The gaggle (or whatever you call a group of lemurs - anyone, anyone?) was only 3-4 feet away from us. I was able to video a couple of the youngest ones playing chase and trying to knock each other from the low branches of a nearby tree.
In the rest of the park we saw kangaroos, bats, penguins and birds of prey. There was also a tide pool area with urchins to hold and live shrimp, starfish and baby shark eggs. We didn't have time to go into the marine exhibit building - there was just too much to see. We can't wait to get back there later in the summer to see some of what we skipped and to show Kevin the cool things we did see. It was a GREAT way to spend the day with my guys.
