Category: Place

It’s been a very real life week, I’m very tired, and it’s very cold out, so I’m going to forego the usual enthusiasm and commentary and just say, ‘wasn’t this pretty?’ About this sky photo from when I was in Portland last month.

Here there be parrots! This was definitely the item on our Canary Islands trip for which I had the most expectation, and I wasn’t sure how it would live up. “Voted best zoo in the world, twice“? I mean, I’ve seen some pretty zoos, but a zoo’s still a zoo, y’know?

It was, in fact, still a zoo! Shocking, I know. At a glance, it looked pretty familiar: there are your ‘big, impressive animals’ – the lions, the tigers, the orcas and the apes; and then the little impressive animals, also – jellyfish, bats, tortoises. Food stops and gift shops, multiple ways to get to the same place, but still a couple of easy first-timer directions, where you can follow the loop and see mostly everything. I don’t mean this as a bad thing – this is the foundation on which our expectations of a zoo are built!

And then there’s the bonuses. Parrots, everywhere, which is a given given that Loro Parque means “parrot park.” Still, somehow, I was surprised at the amount of parrots. Between any two main exhibits, parrots. A whole cluster of walk-through exhibits: also parrots. Opening the dolphin show: there were parrots!

Even excluding the parrots (sorry, parrots), the dolphin show was a standout, with not just the tricks and edutainment one would expect, but also a strong sense of crowd work and how to keep a full house engaged! The pacing was solid, and the music choices were also strong. Delightful. We hit all four of the shows they were running, including the parrots, and while all of them were good, this one was the most memorable.

Also a favorite was the penguin house, as while Brookfield Zoo out by us has warm-weather penguins, it does not have Antarctic, and it definitely doesn’t have a conveyor belt to view them from. The walk-on conveyor belts were just a good idea in general, it seemed; slowly rotating around the exhibit while you view is definitely an experience! And it gets everyone on the belt all of the angles. Also a faint sense of comedic effect. You know. Just a little.

I have no idea how one chooses best zoo in the world, but this one was delightful, with so much to see and appreciate, and we still managed to see all but half an exhibit and all of the shows in an only-slightly-harried full day! If you happen to be visiting Tenerife, definitely keep it in mind, and if you happen to be in Puerto de la Cruz, there’s a free street train that runs to and from downtown. Happy travels!

While we were in the Canary Islands, we partook of a Teide by Night tour, which picked us up near our hotel and gave us a full-evening experience of Teide National Park! The same bus was assigned to us to us for the whole trip, from pickup to drop-off, and for the hour climb through more and more residential areas, to the mist-laden forest above, and through the perpetual cloud cover into bright and sunny mountains.

We stopped at a restaurant briefly, with the opportunity for snacks; saw canaries (our first of the trip!) out and about while we waited; and headed back out in no time at all, off to see viewpoints. Gorgeous views from the bus, stop, step out, take photos, rinse and repeat – you can spend a whole trip in this park, so there was a lot to cover. The peak was not one of them – for that, you need a permit, far enough in advance to not be sensible for large tour groups.

And it was, indeed, a large tour group, or at least the company is – while our bus had maybe twenty people, there were three or four buses all running at the same time, and we all came in to dinner together, slightly staggered. It’s difficult to stagger them too far, you understand – after dinner, we all headed out to watch sunset, and it’s not like that waits for anybody! I enjoyed the food, certainly, but sunset was the stunner, made better with warm mint tea to stave off the impending cold. Another moment at the restaurant – bathrooms, liquor tastings for those who partake – long enough for the sky to darken, and then we were off to watch the stars. I learned more about where the constellations are in relation to each other and the information they actually convey than I have in the rest of my life! And the pre-set-up telescopes allowed us to get several special looks at the sky, including of a nebula. Magic.

This one… was a lot. As you may gather from the sheer quantity of stuff happening, there was a lot of rushing from place to place, and it’s definitely not for anyone who wants to stay in one place for an extended period of time, or have finer control over in which places you stay at a given moment. That said, if you only have a day for Teide, as we did, this was incredible, and any trip to Teide would be, with guaranteed clear weather and even clearer view of the stars. Difficult to be subject to the whims of clouds when you’re above them! Literally. So this was a delight.

A few weeks ago, I posted about our trip to Tenerife (Canary Islands) and our day trip to a number of gardens. Those were further afield, but Puerto de la Cruz – where we were staying – had gardens too!

On our second full day on Tenerife, we visited Jardín de Aclimatación de La Ortova, more simply known as “Jardín Botánico de Puerto de la Cruz,” a botanic garden (jardín botánico), a not-terribly-long walk from where we were staying. Beyond the usual garden things – plants, water features, a welcome amount of shade – we also saw Eurasian blackbirds, Eurasian collared doves, a rat (just chillin’ in the undergrowth), and an endemic butterfly! Called “Canary speckled wood,” which confused the hell out of me when I ID’d it. I thought perhaps my app had glitched and focused on a tree!

Unlike the animals, the plants were well-labeled – as one can do when the subject is stationary – with species, family, common name, and area of origin! Which is how I know this funky donut-looking thing is a fig tree from tropical Asia!

That, and having played Metaflora for a while now, I was delighted to actually recognize some of the family names!! It’s the little things.

Mom posted recently about out trip to Tenerife and our accomodations in Puerto de la Cruz specifically, so of course I’m going to post about… our day-trip to a completely different town!

Icod de los Vinos is a scenic bus ride from Puerto, and an absolute delight. Or at least, the one block we spent any appreciable amount of time on was!

On that block were Parque del Drago, home to a tree at least eight hundred (and possibly a thousand) years old; Mariposario del Drago, a butterfly house; and Casa del Plátano, a museum all about the cultivation of bananas! And a restaurant attached to the park. Had we been staying in the area, it was the sort of restaurant that we’d have been back to multiple times.

Beyond the namesake and massive elder tree (and the restaurant), Parque del Drago had a number of other native species, a cave, and an herb garden, with signage about all of them. The mariposario had birds, as pictured above, and Casa del Plátano had chickens – a form of natural pest control – and gives you a banana upon entrance. “Your ticket,” they said, as they handed us each a fruit. If you eat your banana around the chickens, they will stare disconcertingly. Or at least, they did for me. (It’s worth noting that Casa del Plátano also grows bananas, and the chickens were outdoors. They were not unleashed inside a concrete museum. Or whatever the primary building materials might be.)

All told, the three of these were small enough to fit easily into a day, inexpensive enough we didn’t feel cheated for it, and delightfully complementary. Between thought-provoking nature, head-empty pretty nature, and the process by which humans interact with nature, I was having a good time. Did you know that a continuous stem of bananas is really heavy? I didn’t, and I’ll never take them for granted again.

Also, curry leaves are silver. Who knew?

Tragically, JOANN Fabric and Craft Stores are closing, that distant monolith of my childhood doomed to date me like memories of Blockbuster and PanAm date my elders. As the closing sales grow steeper, however, I have been introduced to things I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, like the plastic flowers and birds I’ve used to decorate curtain rods and light fixtures, at least one pack of stickers, and a good solid container for our cat toys to be stored in! So thank you to JOANN for that. I’ll remember it fondly… and keep the garlands out of cat-batting distance.

A little while ago now, we found ourselves in Freeport, Grand Bahama, with one day to spend, a high-wind warning, and, consequently, a cancelled kayaking excursion. What to do?

It was not a particularly difficult decision to go to the local botanic gardens, as one does, and spend our day there. And it was a day well-spent! The gardens were gorgeous, naturally, bright and colorful in a way that Illinois in mid-early March was not. They had multiple water features, which ducks and turtles took full advantage of, and a couple of garden cats, lounging in the sun. And parrots! One of the parrots said “Hello!!” and bobbed along to music.

Mostly, what we found was it was quiet. Some of that was circumstance – the same wind advisory that nixed our kayaking cut garden-and-something excursions, leaving it super empty – and part of that was the space. With several, meandering paths that all loop back towards the central space eventually, and bushes and tall flowers obscuring the rest of the paths from view, it managed to both be relatively compact – we saw everything – and private. And there are swings, which was a nice bit of nostalgia.

Of course, I can’t talk about Garden of the Groves without mentioning the shops there. Local artists have vendor space, in a row over by one of the ponds, selling magnets, jewelry, etc. Not all of the shops were open – again, cancelled excursions, and consequent shortage of customers – but the ones that were open all had something we wanted, at reasonable enough prices that we got something from each! They took an already lovely, peaceful day, and made it just that bit better. And it was my perception that the shopkeepers were attentive without pressuring, which I definitely appreciated.

We were in West Palm Beach, Florida recently without a concrete plan for how to spend a day, so we went brochure fishing and found ourselves at Cox Science Center and Aquarium! It’s right next to Palm Beach Zoo, which I thought was pretty convenient, and it partners with a variety of food trucks on weekends so that there’s food. More importantly, it’s a neat little science museum!

First of all, dinosaurs. This is both the temporary exhibit currently on display and a theme of their outdoor space, where a handful of dinosaur chairs and things abound; the indoor, more involved version includes animatronics and a Mesozoic tour of Pangaea, mapping out dinosaurs by continent! This was especially cool to me, as it put eras and geography back in context in a way that growing up with Jurassic Park did not. Similarly, even for dinos where I knew which current-day continent they were found on, it hadn’t occurred to me that at the time that they existed we still had supercontinents, and so where those species were relative to each other was very different! It was just a hike from South America to Australia, once upon a time.

Outside, along with the dino walk, a number of physics-based exhibits, a splash pad, and a gem panning station! You were welcome to buy a bag of gemstones, shark teeth, or fossils, complete with mining substrate, and experience panning for yourself. Inside, some engineering-for-kids stuff that reminded me of the DuPage Children’s Museum here in Illinois, a meteorology exhibit, space rocks, logic puzzles, and, of course, the aquarium! I was especially excited about this bit, as it’s specifically focused on the Atlantic and Florida. Also, animals. I spent a lot of time here, taking photos and reading signage, of course, but also attending a number of activities! Including alligator petting. And feeding! Which were, notably, separate events. Turns out it’s also very entertaining to watch fish demolish a piece of lettuce!

If you’re ever in West Palm Beach, this is a great something to do that’s mostly inside, a little bit outside, and easily spanning multiple interests – we didn’t really get to the Planetarium schedule, and they have that too! There’s whole sections that are definitively aimed at kids, and as adults we wound up making most of a day of it.

Yes, yes, it’s a little early for the Christmas season – as an American, I generally assume it starts after Thanksgiving. But the Christkindlmarket is open, and the weather was good, and I had a great time!

For those who don’t know, the Christkindlmarket is a “German-style outdoor market” that pops up in the holiday season, with locations in both Chicago and Aurora. It’s largely Christmas themed, though not exclusively, with vendors selling everything from ornaments to elaborate wooden puzzles to cakes. They represent locations around the world, also – my lunch was Dutch, my new gloves hail from Ecuador, and there were handmade journals from Nepal! There’s always a combination of well-made staples and novelty items, and a food selection for everybody. The poffertjes pictured below, for instance. Or the vegan empanadas at Fons! Regardless, it’s a great way to spend an afternoon.

My examples are all from the Aurora location, I should note, which also has glassblowing lessons this year.