Travel With Rithu

Today we went to the Dublin zoo! To reach the zoo, we had to take a bus from where we are staying. After a few stops, I saw a sign board that said’DUBLIN ZOO’. As soon as I saw it, I called my parents and said, “We must get down here, this is our stop!” I think they got really comfortable sitting inside the bus because, my parents said that I am wrong and it should be the next stop. When we went outside at the next stop, my parents realized that I was correct because they didn’t see any Dublin zoo in the place. I know, it’s not good to scold our parents, but as the zoo was very far out, we cannot choose to walk because by the time we reach the zoo, we will be tired! So I was pretty disappointed, so out of frustration I scolded my parents! Still, my parents took it lightly and started teasing me! To get the same bus, we had to wait for about 20 minutes! Finally, the bus came and we boarded it again to get to the zoo entrance.

After taking the tickets, we went to the entrance gate. At the gate, on top of it, it said ‘ZOORASSIC TRAIL’ in very cool fonts. There were tiny plastic fires next to the writing, and the gate was made out of black stones. When I saw the gate, I imagined that it would be full of rides. So, as I love rides, I told my dad, “Let’s go there!”

Immediately after we got through the gates, I saw a huge T-rex! It looked so realistic with the wrinkles and moved back and forth and it even roared! On the way while walking, we saw many other realistic looking dinosaurs. After seeing lots of dinosaurs for a long time, my Dad asked, “Where are the real animals?” I said, ” I don’t know.” Suddenly my mom joined the conversation and said, “Look!” pointing at a board. “It said SEA LIONS! Yay!” I cheered. I was very excited to finally see a real animal in the zoo, although I didn’t know what sea lions were. When we reached the place where the Sea Lions were supposed to be, all we saw was a small pond and a shed next to it. For a moment, I didn’t understand what the shed was for. I was wondering until I saw a sea lion’s head poking from the water! Then, I understood what the shed was for. It was for looking under water to watch the Sea Lions through a glass wall. So, I told my parents, “Let’s go inside the shed!” Just as I reached the glass, I saw a sea lion swimming  towards us! It was super huge and cute! It looked like seals and I wondered, “Are sea lions… same as seals?”. When the Sea Lion got very close to the glass wall, I took my camera to take a picture and a video. Sea lions look like seals but the difference between them is their ear structure. Sea lion’s ears are flappy ears while the seal’s ears are little holes on the sides of their head. Both seals and sea lions belong to the same family called PINNIPEDS (Of course, I googled to get this information).

Afterwards, we walked to the other fields. In the next place there was a huge compound with tall giraffes, white oryxes, rhinoceroses and zebras.  All of the animals were roaming around, especially the giraffes, as they looked like they were posing for the cameras but when I tried to take a pic with my camera, the giraffe just put it’s head down! After taking lots of pictures, we headed towards the bats. To see the bats, we had to go to a dark room. To get used to the darkness, the caretaker told us to close our eyes for some time until we think we can see in the darkness. Since it was dark, we were not able to take any pictures. We had to wait for sometime to see the bat. It was because bats are shy. After some waiting, I finally spotted a bat flying around! The bat’s eyes were big and were almost bulging out of its sockets! After seeing the bats, we went ahead blindly because we didn’t know the way.

We walked and walked until we reached a cafe. In the cafe, my Dad bought a bottle of orange juice. While we were drinking, I noticed that there were different types of birds, including a colourful peacock that freely walked around other people for food. 

After we left the cafe, we walked towards the penguins which my Dad said that he doesn’t want to see. Instead, he said that he will walk slowly to the exit and wait for us there. When me and my Mom went to the penguins, I was surprised that a penguin could live here in Ireland because I thought penguins only lived in Antarctica! By the time we reached the penguins, they just finished their swimming/bath inside a pool nearby. They also looked very cute, shaking off the water in their fur. After a while we decided to head back to the entrance where my Dad was waiting for us. While we were walking back, we saw my Dad still standing on the path, waiting for us! We thought he had already reached the exit a long time ago! I was happy that he waited for us so I ran to my dear Dad to hug him. In the whole experience, I was enjoying and excited about seeing every single animal. Some of them looked ugly, I must say, some looked scary and the rest looked very cute. By the time we left the zoo, I was very hungry so we had to go to the tearoom which was in a very beautiful location.

This is the last place I wanted to blog about my trip to Ireland. From the next blogs I write, you will read about a new place, in another country.