Łódź in lights

After our lovely morning making gingerbread with Prity on Monday 17th February, we bade her goodbye in Toruń as our next stop was Warsaw. However, it takes about 3 and a half hours to drive to Warsaw so I decided to stop at the Łódź Zoo Orientarium which was only 2 hours away! The car parking was 35zl (£7) just outside and we bought a ticket for two for 150zł (£30) at the ticket office when we got there. I had actually emailed back and forth to ask questions about parking and they were very helpful. and quick to reply. I couldn't quite work out how to buy tickets online but you really don't need to.

The Łódź Zoo Orientarium is open from 09:00 - 17:00 with the ticket counters closing at 16:00 but the time to hit is 15:30 when the elephants have their bath and you can see them swimming. We went straight in, through the aquarium area which has over 1300 fish including sharks, bowmouth guitarfish, zebra sharks, blacktip sharks and ray and the longest underwater tunnel in Poland (26m long!), and spent a bit of time in a 7D immersive experience section. Here we were able to scuba dive with sharks and manta rays. This was a little more expensive - we had three turns (and held hands so Tiger didn't get scared!) and paid £32 but it was really excellent. I have actually dived at manta ray cleaning stations many years ago in Tofo, Mozambique and I can't wait to be able to take Tiger diving when she is old enough. She can start learning from age 8 so watch this space!

The elephants having their bath were amazing but then so too were the two big fish tanks inhabited by red garras – fish who feed on dead skin cells - which were right next to the elephant bath - I am not sure which was more entertaining! Randomly, the zoo also had loads of kids who were doing their Holiday Camp at the zoo - what an amazing idea. We didn't manage to get photos of them unfortunately but we also saw the only Sumatran orangutans in Poland: Jawa, Joko and Budi.

The dining options looked amazing here (including a candy floss machine!) along with a cool playground but we missed out on eating here as the restaurants were closing. Still, I had planned to visit the Park Miliona Zwiatel (Park of a Million Stars) which is basically in the zoo anyway and we managed to simply not leave so we saw all the illuminations before we left just after 17:30. The illumination display is otherwise running until 2nd March with normal tickets being 49zl (£9.72) and reduced tickets being 42zl (£8.39) so we seem to have saved this by simply not leaving at 17:00 when the zoo part closed!

We headed off in darkness just after 17:30 for the 1h30 minute drive to Warsaw. I felt as if I had to be really paying attention in the dark as some of the roads were not so well lit - this was also a driving heavy day - but all in all went well! All in all, I really thought Łódź Zoo Orientarium was brilliant. There is not a huge amount online in terms of reviews on Tripadvisor but it is excellent and I can definitely highly recommend a visit.