PAIRI DAIZA, THE LARGEST TROPICAL GREENHOUSE ON EARTH!

 Up early and on a train yet again!  Stormy (I mean Jonah) was on board!

Mommy and August were on board!

Papa and DiDi were on board.

Daddy was on board as well!

Jon Jon was on board but sound asleep!

Where were we headed?  None other than a place we saw on an airport advertisement when arrived in Brussels!  We all saw it, looked at each other and said, “Now THAT looks AMAZING!”

After three connecting train rides, a walk through what appeared to be an abandoned (but really cool) town, down a long tree lined street…

…we finally arrived at PAIRI DAIZA!!!  (Talk about being out in the boonies!)  It had quite the entry and we knew right away that this was going to be something special!

The grounds were absolutely gorgeous!  We all LOVED the geodes (especially Chloe and August),

the ancient buildings,

the really cool art structures,

and the over-the-top bee hives throughout the park (lucky bees)!

But what was everyone’s favorite thing (besides the zoo animals, of course), were all the stork nests EVERYWHERE!  

We learned that you could rent out different places to spend the night right on the zoo grounds.  There were several different options (we LOVED them all),

because they each backed up to an animal habitat!  I told John to forget our Bucket List African Safari, let’s just stay here!

The clouds got darker and the wind got stronger so we headed for shelter where we were smack dab in front of the porcupines!  They were so fun to watch—who knew?

We waited a bit and finally ventured outside where we discovered that the black clouds had dissipated and left only sprinkles!  Another major storm missed on this trip!  Whew!

There were dinosaurs in one area that were so realistic, August and Jonah were mesmerized!

As were John and I!

It was wonderful to see all the animals in their phenomenal environments!

By the time we had walked every inch of the 65 hector zoo (TBH, we might have missed a hector or two), we all felt like Jonah!!!

But we sucked it up for our final zoo photo,

before hiking all the way back to the train station!  Like I said before, it takes a team traveling with children!

Papa and Stormy (I mean Jonah) solved a lot of world problems on the ride back,

and August kept Papa and Jon Jon entertained at each train station!

It was a fabulous day at a phenomenal zoo!  What an awesome experience!  

                                                         Good Night, Brussels!!!