What’s it like to visit the aquarium in the Cologne Zoo? Well, we’ve been to Cologne several times already, to visit the Chocolate Museum, see the Gothic cathedral, and take a panorama trip on a ship on the Rhine River or to play at the indoor playground, Hoplop or visit the precious stones fair. This time, we went with Lyons Cub’s niece and nephew in order to see the aquarium, which is part of the famous Cologne Zoo. What’s best, the entry fee is already included in the general zoo admission ticket!
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.
First, we visited the land animals. The monkeys were extra active and fun today, so here are a few impressions of them posing:
The brown bear was out and about in his territory:
Lyons Cub also admired the meerkats. Since it’s February and still a little cool, they had a heat lamp under which they could lie. Some were running around, and others were standing and looking at the visitors.
The cheetah, which at our previous visits had either hidden or lain lazily on a mound of green grass (seemingly her favorite spot), was walking around and showing off her beauty:
Walking around the vast zoo was a bit tiring, so we rented out a cart for EUR 10 (with EUR 15 put down as a security, which we received back when we left the zoo) and pulled Lyons Cub and sometimes his cousin, who had a bad knee. It was fun!
Before we went into the zoo shop to buy a stuffed meerkat, a magic rainbow slinky, and some other toys for Lyons Cub, we visited the aquarium we had never seen before. Through bulls’ eyes at different heights, the kids could watch fish swimming by:
Big fish stared at us, and some even had two pointy, yellow teeth 😉 I remember having seen those in the Honolulu aquarium before on my honeymoon to Hawaii. There was a single, cute puffer fish with large, external spines, too. And the big, blue toothy fish had a tiny, orange comrade swimming right by its side:
The sea anemones were gently swishing around in the current, and colorful fish swam by the glass windows. We really liked this blue and yellow striped specimen:
There was some amazing anemone that shone in a bright neon green, and a curious fish with a long nose came by:
Look at the dark and light blue striped beauty!
While the Cologne Zoo aquarium was not as big as Sea Life in Oberhausen, we saw many amazing critters, and the area was just the right size to cover with a grade school kid without hearing, “I’m tired, I’m tired” all the time 😉
Piranhas must not be missing in an aquarium:
We saw several schools of fish and also some frogs and tadpoles. There was a huge, long rainbow shark like the one we have at home in our own sweet water aquarium, but ours is about a third of its size.
Besides the fish, there were also spiders and lizards,
and amazing centipedes that were so big and brown that they almost looked like turds:
Three green anoles were positioning themselves in a row on a branch:
Mommy spent a long time at the lizards’ cages, because she once was a breeder of leopard geckos in Carbondale, IL (called LZRDGRL at national reptile expos) from 2008-2014 but also had crested geckos, gargoyle geckos, mossy leaf-tailed geckos, a chahoua gecko, and even a hybrid. Mommy used to attend reptile shows and vend her leopard geckos’ offspring there, for example in Wheaton/Chicago, at the Memphis Repticon, in Shepherdsville, KY, and in Indianapolis, IN.
All in all, this was a valuable and educational trip for school children. If you haven’t been to the Cologne Zoo yet, I really recommend you also visit its aquarium when going there!