The weather was good with very clear skies which worked well for some photos of the animals in the zoo but worked against pictures of some of the others depending on where their enclosures were relative to us. That said, I was quite pleased with a few of the shots that were taken looking more into the sun, one of which is included below along with a couple of other favourites of mine from the day. These pictures all show different ways of using the light to create atmosphere.

We’d been using the I Amsterdam city cards to visit places and luckily for us we’d bought the 48-hour versions. They were still valid for the entirety of our additional time in the city so we checked the map and elected to head towards the zoo. This walk initially took us back past the maritime museum we’d visited the day before.

Encounters With Dutch Cyclists

We had two interesting encounters with Dutch cyclists on our walk.

We didn’t get lost because I knew the approximate location of the zoo and figured it would be difficult to miss something that large but I did pull the map out at one point just to verify which of two roads would get us to our destination in the shortest time. This caused a woman on a bike to come to a screeching halt and immediately try to to help us out. This was very nice of her but as luck would have it she appeared to be the one person in Amsterdam who spoke no English. She did seem to have some German, or assumed we were for some reason, and I knew enough German words to pick out her directions and thank her even though I knew where I was going anyway.

Just as we arrived at the zoo we stopped and waited for another woman on a bike to come through one of the dedicated lanes. She did so at a fair speed but then her wheel seemed to clip the pavement, the bike wobbled, and she went flying. We ran across the road to assist and discovered she was bleeding quite heavily from her forehead, elbow, and foot. We handed over tissues we were fortunately carrying and asked if she wanted an ambulance; she said no and explained she wasn’t sure what had happened and that this had never happened to her before, that she was in her seventies and should know better, and that she just felt embarrassed. Another Dutch woman turned up to assist and we got her disentangled from her bike and on her feet. I picked up the things she’d dropped and broken (the frame of her glasses were detached) and another woman then also turned up from a nearby premises with a First Aid kit. Figuring she was in better hands with those people than with startled foreigners we wished her well, were thanked, and carried on. A shock for all involved and we hope she wasn’t too badly injured as a result. We were just glad we were there to help.

Artis Royal Zoo

To give it its full name Amsterdam Zoo is more properly known as Natura Artis Magistra but it’s recognised by the shorter name of simply Artis. The zoo is one of the oldest in Europe. We didn’t wander around with any particular plan, instead favouring just seeing where the winding paths led us. We were quite pleased to see so little fencing around as it makes taking photographs a lot easier.

I had to contend with bright backlighting and made some heavy adjustment of shadows and highlights in processing to save something of the following two shots but it was nice to grab some pictures of a mother with her baby up in the treetops.

We only saw one pair of animals exhibiting any signs of stress, those being the raccoons. For the very largest part this was a very relaxed-feeling zoo interestingly located within view of numerous buildings no doubt offering people living there great sights on a daily basis.

I like cats and I like brutalist architecture so it was lovely to see the former enjoying some of the latter at the zoo.

We can only assume there is something magical about elephants in the Netherlands as the excitement of the children who spotted the animals is difficult to describe. It was all we could do to stay standing as streams of kids thundered past and into us and around us shouting “Olifant! Olifant!” as their parents tried to hush them to little avail.

As well as enclosures outdoors there were a number of interior spaces for butterflies (forgot to visit this; next time), insects, and reptiles. This proved handy to escape a sudden torrential downpour at one point although my wife kept well away from anything that looked like it might remotely contain spiders. While neither of us like arachnids I do find them fascinating and am happy to peer at the creatures behind the safety of glass.

A large building given over to an aquarium was very nice, very spacious. The tanks seemed very clean, especially when compared to various sealife centres we’ve visited around the UK on our travels. There weren’t a huge amount of creatures on display but what there were looked beautiful. The only slight blot on the visit to this particular part of Amsterdam Zoo was that a school group were in attendance in one of the larger rooms and the sound of several dozen children mostly shouting over one another in an echoing hall-like venue did affect the enjoyment of the fish in their environments.

Back outside we ran into the tail end of a sea lion-feeding show taking place.

Our bonus half day in Amsterdam was very enjoyable and thanks to the excellent I Amsterdam city cards, free. We’d have no hesitation in visiting the place again if we were in the city as it’s a nice break from museums.

Sculptures

Just outside the zoo entrance was a small grassy area containing some odd, metal sculptures that was what I’d been intending to photograph before going in until we’d been distracted by the cyclist coming off her bike. I quite liked their unsubtle nature. Make of them what you will, but these were the last photos I took during our lovely few days in Amsterdam on our P&O cruise before making our way back to Azura and heading away from the Netherlands.

Butterflies

The first area in which we found ourselves was the butterfly house, warm and humid just how they like it and requiring me to simply observe the pretty little things for a few minutes until my camera lens had adjusted to the climate and stopped fogging over. I won’t pretend to know what any of the species were – I can just about identify Red Admirals, Peacocks, Commas, Brimstones, and Cabbage Whites – but some sleuthing now indicates that amongst the ones present during our visit to Earnley there may have been butterflies of type Owl, Northern Pearly Eye, Julia, and Malachite. I’m sure there’s a lepidopterist out there who could identify these butterflies for certain.

Birds

From the butterfly house we entered the caged surroundings of the bird enclosure. Like the butterflies these were birds of the more tropical and exotic kind, not typically found in deepest West Sussex. Also like the butterflies I can’t begin to identify all the different types of bird we saw other than cockatoos, which I think are the white ones. Are you an ornithologist? Do you want to add to the sum knowledge of the human species and identify the birds in the photos? I didn’t think so but it was worth a try.

Because the enclosures for both birds and butterflies in Earnley were surrounded by glass to keep a stable temperature, once you passed through the protective plastic doorways you were fully amongst the creatures and they were free to fly past your head or, as in the picture below, sit on your shoe and pose for a photo.

Garden

The next area in Earnley was a more conventional garden containing both plants and flowers you might expect to see in the local climate as well as a dry area housing cacti. I’m not even going to attempt to work out what any of the flowers or plants are as my floral knowledge extends roughly as far as classifying everything as either a daisy or something else.

I am fond of a cactus, partly, I suspect, because they look reasonably difficult to kill and I’m pretty sure I’d be hopeless at keeping any more demanding plant or flower alive.

Beasts

A small area for reptiles in the main completed the wildlife portion of Earnley. First up was one of my wife’s favourite animals (she used to have one when she was younger and still goes on about getting another), the tortoise.

As for me, I’m quite fond of the prehistoric look of some of the larger reptiles and an iguana in particular caught my eye. There’s something fascinating about their skin and the textures clearly present on their ancient-looking bodies.

Nostalgia Museum

In addition to the various forms of fauna and flora there was a small but very packed museum of retro items; I’m a sucker for old memorabilia, toys and games of yesteryear, vintage photos and magazines, etc. so this was joy to wander around. Photos from that visit will appear at some point on this site at which point this post will be updated to include a link to what we saw there and then too. And then we should probably get around to paying Earnley another visit just to see what else other than its name has changed since the last time we took a look at it.

With this publishing of the animals we saw at the zoo taking place almost six years after our visit there’s not going to be a lot of descriptive text accompanying the pictures because my memory isn’t a photographic one. We can’t really remember anything specifically that we got up to at Wingham Wildlife Park but chances are good that we simply walked the main route and snapped away at any of the exhibited creatures that deigned to stay still long enough. What can you say about a zoo that you don’t know already? There are animals there and you either accept that for many it’s an important piece of conservation work or you worry that there’s exploitation taking place. If we were in the latter camp then we wouldn’t visit. We think that zoos generally do a good job these days, in this country at least, and I can’t recall seeing any obviously stressed creatures behind glass or in cages.

So, onto Wingham Wildlife Park’s animals then and I’ll roughly group them according to type rather than by how you might encounter them if you visit.

Snakes

Let’s start with the animals that scare the crap out of my mother-in-law (not that I’d want to). Snakes are creatures where I find that the smaller they are the prettier they tend to be. The brighter colours and more impressive patterning on the scales seem to be found amongst the small snakes while the larger ones forget all that and just rely on their musculature to make you say “Ooh!”

Other Reptiles

One of my wife’s favourite animals is a specific type of reptile. If we ever visit a zoo and see a tortoise and my wife doesn’t remark that she wants to steal one and keep it then I’ll know she’s been taken over by aliens.

As for me, I’ve got a fondness for lizards in the reptile class. They always seem to have the best names: Gila Monster, Bearded Dragon, Geoff the slow-worm, etc. There’s something deliciously prehistoric about a lizard that appeals to the young boy in me who used to know all the names of dinosaurs and who watched plenty of Doug McClure films growing up.

Birds

From dinosaurs to their descendants next, and that means the birds of Wingham Wildlife Park.

Is there anything more terrifying than hornbills?

Many years after seeing pelicans in captivity we would see them flying freely in Mexico (see: Highlights of Puerto Vallarta).

There’s something about birds in general we don’t like anywhere near as much as we do other animals and I can’t say exactly what that is. It’s not as if reptiles are warmer and more affectionate than birds; it’s not as if birds don’t display a great variety of shapes, sizes, and colours; it’s not as if we’re not constantly impressed by just how deliciously smart corvids are; we just don’t generally like them that much. My wife really, really doesn’t like parrots or any close relation of them.

One bird group that slips through into my wife’s affections, though, is that of the penguins. We could have spent ages with the Humboldt’s Penguins at the Kent zoo although after a while the smell does get to you. We’re pleased to say that penguins are other animals we’ve seen both in the zoo and in the wild although our visit to Argentina in 2016 featured Magellanic Penguins instead.

Big Cats

Some people are cat people and some people are dog people. I’m not going to get into all that dogs are stupid and cats are smart debate because the only people disagreeing with that are dog people who are also stupid so what’s the point? We are cat people and we love big cats because they are for the most part simply scaled-up small cats. You know that if you’re in a cave trapped by a tiger (I don’t care if tigers don’t live in caves) you can always distract it with a bit of string or a laser pointer or by placing a pencil or a straw on the edge of a table. Yes, it’s a cave with a table in it. With dogs you never can tell if it’s going to be one that drools over you or one that just won’t stop barking and running around at a thousand miles per hour which puts your very life in peril if you were ever to come face-to-face with a wolf.

Wingham’s big cats included the usual suspects – pumas, jaguars, cheetahs, lions, non-cave-dwelling tigers – but it was nice to spot a caracel too because ears like that need to be seen.

Primates

A brief reminder of evolution history for those of you at the back: sometime between 85 and 55 million years ago the primate order of mammals evolved. The prosimian primates evolved first, these including descendants of the lemur, loris, tarsiers, etc. Anthropoids started evolving from this group around 45 million years ago, anthropoids eventually including the families of animals such as monkeys, apes, and, of course, humans. Prior to anthropoidal development the prosimians were a very prevalent group on the planet but the anthropoids changed that behaviour, effectively dominating the daytime activity while the prosimians became more nocturnal. So if you’ve ever thought of yourself as more of a nighttime person then it’s entirely possible you’re prosimian.

All of this is just a lead-up to saying that Wingham Wildlife Park had examples of both lemurs (prosimian primates)…

…and monkeys (anthropoid primates). The macaques were another animal that we got to see in their natural environment years later when we visited the Rock of Gibraltar.

Other Mammals

And finally, all the other mammals I saw fit to photograph at the zoo. I was very pleased to see bats as we’ve visited places allegedly holding them before and just had to take their word for it.

And this shed houses bats.

Does it? Where?

They’re in there. They like the dark.

Oh. Kay. What about the next shed?

Pterodactyls!

Who apparently also like the dark.

Oh yes, the more impossibly dark the better.

Well, this has been a fun visit.

I’ve saved until last the animal that has forever been known as my nemesis ever since I tried to take a photo of one at Marwell Zoo and it moved a split second before every single shot much to my wife’s intense joy: the red panda. She was devastated that this one in Wingham allowed me to capture some pictures without swearing.

We do like visiting zoos when we travel but in Marwell’s case it happens to be fairly close to where we live and we can drive there in about twenty minutes. I know that zoos aren’t for everyone and I cover this in the zoo tag description but I’ll repeat it here too: many do good work at breeding endangered and vulnerable species of animals, and we support those endeavours. Marwell Zoo opened in 1972 after its founder sold a Rolls Royce and used to the proceeds to buy zebras, and was one of the first zoos in Europe to emphasise conservation.

Not pictured is my nemesis: the Red Panda. I still harbour dark thoughts about that red panda. The way he’d look down at me and strike a pose then fix his eyes on my finger over the camera shutter button and time his sudden movement or look away to absolute perfection. The way I’d swear. The way my wife – well, she wasn’t at the time but I still ended up marrying her – laughed hysterically at failed attempt after failed attempt to photograph the furry git.

Anyway, you’re here for the photos of the animals at Marwell Zoo and not for the mutterings of an angry old man so here they are pretty much in order of us seeing them on a circuit of the attraction.

After our walk through the The Garden Society Of Gothenburg And The Palm House we continued in a roughly southerly direction. Architecture in Gothenburg was fairly mixed so elements stood out as a result. Immediately outside the park we spotted a nineteenth century theatre, then one road over something that could have had a history as a church or fire station but was now a table tennis facility.

As we approached the Universeum there was a lot of building work taking place; excavations, demolitions, and construction were in evidence in every direction. With plenty of boards up to protect the roads and passers-by from any debris or to prevent trespassing there were also a lot of canvasses on which street artists could work. Actually getting any photos of any of it was incredibly difficult, though, as the pedestrianised areas to walk along were very narrow, squeezed between the busy main roads and hoardings. We thought we might be able to find more advantageous photography positions after our visit to the museum but that would not prove to be possible.

The Universeum itself was a very impressive building with a multistorey jungle setting inside one side accessed along bridges and up and down steps, but also capable of being visited by elevators on each level. Airlock-style entrances prevented any of the wildlife from escaping because some of the birds were free-flying. It was a great environment but warm, busy, and with lots of ups and downs requiring a fair bit of exertion – and we’re no spring chickens – that we soon realised that our tactic of entering at the lowest level was a mistake.

We abandoned our look low down and took the elevator to the top with the intention to explore from there downwards instead. Happily, we also saw that it was possible to head out onto a balcony area so it gave us a chance to get some fresh air and see Gothenburg from high altitude. The metallic-looking towers we immediately saw belonged to a hotel. The nearby dinosaur sculpture looked like it might have emerged from the excavation work taking place in all directions.

While one side of the Universeum held the tropical zoo-like environment, on the other side on each of the floors there were other rooms and that gave us the chance to look around the aquarium. Clean, large tanks, lots of varieties of fish and coral and sea urchins, and we’re rarely if ever disappointed with just stopping for a moment or two to watch fish swim effortlessly around.

Back to the other animals then before we decided to leave, and that took us past numerous reptiles, and, like the fish, they’re creatures that just make me relax. A lovely variety of snakes and lizards to admire curled up in various desert or jungle settings, and exotic flowers to ooh and aah over as well.

We spent less time in the Universeum than we’d expected, despite its large size and arguably good attractions that should have suited us perfectly. In truth, this was more a place for families with kids, so if you’re visiting Gothenburg with children then there’s a lot to recommend here, especially given the large amusements area next to the Universeum that we weren’t interested in checking out.

We mostly enjoyed the building and things in the Universeum although we encountered some behaviour from locals – visitors and staff – that we wouldn’t quite describe as rude, but would definitely put down as just over the border there in Unfriendlyland. It affected the experience. You know the stereotype about Londoners on tube trains being sullen and unapproachable? This was like that, but colder. We’d interacted with a couple of people while walking around the Palm House before this, too, with similar results; holding a door open for someone and smiling but being met with an icy stare and not even a nod of acknowledgement; that sort of thing. Something about the people of Gothenburg did not endear us to their city.

And that’s part of the reason that we decided that we’d cut short our walk around the city at this point. There was another area we’d considered taking a look at on this day in Gothenburg: Haga, the old town. This would have meant the almost-circular route we’d planned before returning to the shuttle bus pick-up point, but the general downbeat feeling at this point coupled with light rain that had started helped us to decide to head back early instead. In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll do just that when we say goodbye to Gothenburg.

We didn’t have any firm plans on the drive up but we were on the lookout for anything of interest just to give us a chance to stretch our legs and as we were heading along the A40 in the vicinity of Bourton-on-the-Water we spotted a sign for Birdland. This was where we took a break.

This post will feature some photographs of some of the birds we saw. As I’m not a birder or twitcher or ornithologist or even vaguely knowledgeable about birds in general there’s not going to be anything remotely interesting to mention about them, and I won’t even guess at some of the species. Do we like seeing birds when we travel? Yes. Do we notice birds we’ve not seen before? Yes. Do we have a clue what they are other than birds? Absolutely not. Is this waffle just to pad out the text content of this post so it’s not just entirely a set of pictures of birds all labelled as “Bird”? Maybe.

You’ll notice a lot of photos of penguins here. The main reason for this is that my wife really likes penguins. They are interesting, it’s true, but they do pong a bit to my sensitive nose. Birdland has England’s only King Penguins. They’re very similar to Emperor Penguins but are constrained to ruling over a single land by Antarctic decree.

To finish, a couple of photographs I was very pleased with, getting enough sharpness on the eyes and a shallow enough depth of field for bokeh plus some interesting texture effects caused by shooting through a wire mesh. A parrot – which you could probably tell even if you had the same bird knowledge levels as me on account of its general parrotness – and, below that, a black-throated laughingthrush. Yes, I did have to point my phone at the picture and get it to identify the bird. Yes, I could have done that with all the birds. But so could you.

We stepped through the security checkpoint at the exterior of the port and found ourselves face-to-face (well, if we crouched) with a peacock. You could see everyone from our tour group immediately whipping out phones and cameras for this because generally speaking you don’t often find peacocks inside cruise port security zones.

The single peacock, though, was nothing compared to what we saw when we rounded the corner and found ourselves in what we later learned was called the Port Oasis Eco Park. I’ve described it as an aviary in the title of this post but it actually contains more than just birds; it’s simply that we didn’t see anything else during our short but very pleasant walk through the grounds. The park was part of the land given over to the port authority when they were tasked with building cruise ship infrastructure, using this buffer zone for security but also as a wildlife habitat. Falling within the security zone of the port it’s a place that’s therefore only accessible to cruise visitors to Cartagena. In addition to more-than-seventy different species of animals there, you will also find a gift shop, somewhere to eat, and toilets.

A lovely surprising end to our time in Colombia but it really was approaching all-aboard time about now so we didn’t dawdle long and headed through to where Ruby Princess was tied up.

Our usual routine when we get back on board a Princess Cruises ship, thanks to the Ocean Medallion system, is to head to our room then order some drinks and maybe snacks to be delivered so that we can cool off, freshen up, and take advantage of our balcony for some last views of wherever we happen to be or to see the sail away. This was no exception.

The sun, getting lower on the horizon, was both producing some lovely colour changes in the sky and bringing with it a drop in overall temperature, and you could see heavy clouds starting to form in the distance as that humidity in the atmosphere started to to condense. We had a feeling that Cartagena might be in for another night of rain and flooding such as that we’d been told had preceded our visit earlier in the day at the start of our tour.

The skyline of the Bocagrande area of Cartagena looked absolutely stunning in silhouette against the darkening sky. As Ruby Princess slowly made her way out and away from the final port of call on our cruise the quiet of the late evening was occasionally punctuated by small party boats heading out on sunset cruises, music thumping across the still water. We couldn’t complain: the ship’s daily activities had us down to do something similar a little later in the day.

But first, dinner, and a drink or several. The Ruby Princess main dining room menu and the food we selected for the evening are below for your perusal if that’s the sort of thing you’re interested in.

The Ruby Princess equivalent of a sunset party boat cruise was an 80s Deck Party, quite some time after the sun had actually set. Not the first deck party we’d had on this cruise, and only really differentiated from the others by the selection of music performed by the house band and the neon outfits worn by the entertainments crew, but still enjoyable to get out, get some air, and think how much more preferable all of this was to being at home.

The next post in this Ruby Princess 2023 cruise travelogues series will be the penultimate one and the last spent aboard the ship herself as we relax for two sea days on the way to the departure point at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

We’d looked ahead of time for other things to do that weren’t quite in the same area as those we’d visited before, even though we’d skipped out on several museums and art galleries back then owing to time constraints. We certainly could have retraced our steps and visited all new places on this trip to Rotterdam but decided to do things a little differently and see a little more of Rotterdam as a whole. That would mean a Metro ride because the first thing we decided might be nice to look at was the zoo. Zoos have their critics but each should be taken on its merits because many do good work for conservation.

Now, if you get off your cruise ship in Rotterdam and head straight towards the Erasmus Bridge then you’ll pass the entrance to Wilhelminaplein station and you can board there but there’s a little known law if you’re visiting Rotterdam by cruise and you’ve got a website or social media presence on which you want to brag about your travelling lifestyle, and that’s that you must take a picture of your cruise ship from the bridge. We did this, as you can see below.

We could then have walked back to the station but decided we might as well walk a little further on to the next station instead, Leuvehaven. It wasn’t that much further to walk. There we picked up a couple of Tourist Day Tickets and you can see what that included in the photo below. Basically, buses, trams and Metro trains (not overland trains), plus the water bus, in both Rotterdam and The Hague (and we might head to The Hague next time we visit here just to check that out). The ticket lasts until the last transport of the day of purchase and isn’t a rolling 24-hour ticket so you’ll get the most value from it by buying and using it earlier in the day.

We emerged back into the daylight at Rotterdam Central and from there effectively followed the animal print trail in the direction of the zoo.

I like architecture without being any kind of expert in the field, and I like going on cruises where maybe my knowledge of lines, ships, itineraries, and histories is actually a little better than most. It’s nice when you can combine some loves in your life, like spotting houses in a terrace incorporating balconies spanning bay windows of adjacent buildings on the ground floor, each balcony being separated by a divider very much in the style of cruise ships. It looks like late Art Deco influence here from the Streamline Moderne style.

A sculpture of an athlete then caught our eyes. This was Fanny Blankers-Koen, the most successful athlete at the 1948 Olympics in London with four gold medals. The bronze sculpture was erected in 1954.

Now to the pictures from Rotterdam Zoo. As you can see it was an overcast day so the photos aren’t as bright or colourful as they could be, and as you’ll soon discover there’s not a lot I can really add from this point on. The photos will mostly show animals in the zoo. I’m not about to go into the types of animals or give you information about the species. All I will say to start off with is that this was a very big zoo, spaced out, with large enclosures for the animals within. We didn’t see any signs of stress anywhere and that’s not been true of some other zoos we’ve been to in the past.

We spent a long time watching the primates below and that’s mostly because of the baby present. It was lovely to see it being passed from adult to adult while grooming took place.

In other zoo visits over the years it’s become a running joke that the Red Panda is my nemesis, often remaining perfectly still until I raise my camera in its direction at which point it will either turn around or move behind something, the end result being my wife laughing hysterically. Got it this time, though.

Rotterdam Zoo included an aquarium area and we do like an aquarium so we had to take a look at that too.

Finally, a couple of species that my wife adores for some reason: penguins and tortoises. The penguins were ridiculously large and quite menacing in a way.

We didn’t see everything there was to see at Rotterdam Zoo but suddenly realised we’d spent hours there and far longer than we’d expected or intended so decided to cut our visit short in order to get some other sightseeing done. Rotterdam Zoo is right there with the best of zoos that we’ve been to and we’d be more than happy to make a return trip there one day.

In the next post in this Aurora cruise travelogue series we’ll head down for a walk around the historic area of Delfshaven.

Did you know that deer like to eat clothing? Well we didn’t know that but there was a gated section within the wildlife park where you could walk amongst the deer and I still have fond memories of laughing along with numerous other visitors there at the time who found ourselves the sources of nibbled hoodies and jeans and undone shoelaces.