St Louis - Zoo

Forest Park in St Louis is one of the largest urban parks in America and 500 acres larger than Central Park. Within the park itself, there is the St Louis Zoo, the St Louis Art Museum, the Missouri History Museum, St Louis Science Center, a golf course, etc...

Our first stop at the Forest Park was to visit the St Louis Zoo. The best park about the Zoo is that there is no entrance fee but they do charge for certain exhibits and the train ride. I bought the Safari Pass which is $10 per person and allowed us to take unlimited rides on the train and visit all except for the Stingray Exhibit.

We got to the Zoo just in time for the first Sea Lion show that day and since we were there early, we managed to get seats in the second row right in front of the stage.

I think Sonya and Clara had no idea what the Sea Lion Show was all about.

When the sea lion first slide his way out on stage, it actually gave them both a fright!

The sea lion balanced the ball on his nose and jumped over the rope...

Showed off the size of his mouth...

Shake hands...

The trainer stressed that they uses positive re-enforcement at the zoo (I need to use that more in my house!)

He later brought the sea lion down from the stage to demonstrate how the sea lion can move over almost any surface.

This lucky girl was somehow the volunteer for the show. Here she held a whistle to the sea lion's nose and he blew the whistle with his nose!

Positive re-enforcement mainly came in the form of yummy treats (well, at least to the seal lion) like fish...

And, squids.

The volunteer trying to gesture to get the sea lion to open his mouth.

Time for a photo and the sea lion rested his wet head on the girl's.

Here he is doing a salute :)

And later jumping through the hoop.

The trainer brought out two more sea lions after that and they showed off their balancing skills.

The show ended with the sea lion leaping up and ringing the bell.

The trainer then brought the sea lions down from the stage once again for the audience to get a closer look at them.

After the sea lion show, it was time for lunch and then off to see the other animals in the zoo.

I was impressed with the different varieties of bears that they have at the zoo.

There were also apes and gorillas.

This gorilla was just happily lazing away but another one got really agitated that started chasing the other gorillas as if looking for a fight and even pounded on the glass wall that separated them from the visitors! I quickly pulled Clara and Sonya back just in case.

See how the angry gorilla scared these three gorillas to climb and hide up on the branches.

The safari pass that we bought at the entrance also allowed us to ride for free on the carousel. Sonya and Clara were both very enthusiastic when we queued to get on but when the carousel started moving, Clara got really scared and I had to carry her in my arms throughout the ride.

Next, we saw some pelicans and flamingos.

Sonya was very excited to take a photo with the flamingos as she was wearing a flamingo top that day :)

A passerby offered to take our photo for us :)

After that, we queued up to visit the penguins and puffins in a temperature controlled enclosure.

Clara just wanted to "sayang sayang" (stroke) the penguin replicas.

This is the first time that I have seen puffins.

Outside the enclosure, one of the staff from the zoo (or maybe a volunteer) had a display with penguin skulls, skin, eggs, etc...

Here is the train that operates within the zoo and was included in the safari pass.

The whole zoo was divided into a few different zones and the one that I liked the most was the Children's Zoo.

There was a little area within the Children's Zoo where kids get to brush these little dwarf goats.

Sonya and Clara both enjoyed brushing the goats but Sonya stopped after one or two goats.

Clara, on the other hand, was ready to make sure that every goat gets a good brush before she left :)

There was also a little playground and water area within the Children's Zoo.

Another passer-by offered to take our photo again :)

Clara is absolutely fascinated with drinking fountains. She feels the need to drink every single one she passes, even now!

Sonya and Clara petting some guinea pigs.

There was butterfly garden within the zoo as well. I had thought that after our butterfly pets, Sonya and Clara would be very interested.

Butterflies were flying everywhere and Sonya just wanted to get out as quickly as possible.

After the butterfly garden, we were all getting really tired and it was also way past Clara's nap time. I put her in the sling and soon enough, she was "knocked out".

Sonya and I quickly made our way through a few more exhibits to see a rhino...

A fake dead deer in the tree...

Gigantic tank with hippos in them. Clara would have love it if she was awake!

Elephants were the last ones we saw before we hop on the train to bring us to the main entrance where we parked our car to get back to the hotel.

But not before we spotted some elephant poop and Sonya insisted that I took a photo of it to show Justin :)