Athens Attica Zoological Park | Where's Your Dunny?

Mr. 7’s favourite thing to do is go to the zoo, and we’ve been to them in Riga, Latvia and Edinburgh, Scotland so we planned to go to the one in Athens too. Unfortunately Ms. 10 stepped on a sea-urchin the day before and put her foot out of commission. I now know how to remove spines from a foot! Mr. 7 and I had a great time, and it was a great father/son day.

The Athens Zoo is in the middle of nowhere

Getting to the Zoo

Athens has transport working quite well, even though their maintenance budget is very thin (no humans working at entrances to subways and trains except for ticket purchases) you can get a long way on the subway and metro. My Son and I took our usual 5 train north to the main Athens station and then east on the M3. When they work you can take a sweet escalator ride down to the platforms.

Another Athens escalator shot down to the subway, no one ever checks tickets

Here’s another view of the escalator. Of course each one is flanked by a set of stairs. I take the stairs sometimes and add it to that day’s workout.

Another Athens escalator shot down to the subway

Mister and I love escalators.

Mr. 7 and me down the escalator at the main Athens city centre station

It’s hard to take a selfie and catch some of the background without making someone suspicious. Really I wasn’t trying to take a picture of you, ha ha.

A sneaky selfie to capture an Athens subway train

We got off at Pallini, couldn’t go any further unless we paid extra and went all the way to the airport (I think that train goes under the mountain range) so we walked over one bridge and found this second station which took us one more stop then we got off and caught a bus to the road the zoo was on, and I carried Mister for the last half kilometre or so. We were a bit hot and tired but made it to the Zoo. I decided on a cab for the Zoo/Pallini stretch on the way back; this was a good choice.

The transfer station Pallini, Athens, Greece

After a quick lunch Mister and I got a “lemonade” (this is either real lemonade from lemon juice or a lemon/lime drink like Sprite or 7-up) and started walking toward the centre of the park. We saw the birds first.

Mr. 7 and I went to the zoo together just outside Athens

Past the birds there’s the cafe and beyond that and to the right, the dolphins and elephants!

We watched the dolphin show:

We were amazed how many beautiful birds they had.

They had many birds at the Athens Attica Zoological Park

We loved the 100 year old turtle, and the statue here was a fun break.

Turtles became a bit of a theme in Athens, the one at this exibit was more than 100 years old (not pictured)

Mr. 7 talks about snakes a lot, poisonous and otherwise, but he isn’t afraid of them. I think this is awesome. He and I giggled at the woman out of the frame that was beside herself with fear about the snake. Even in Greek her meaning was clear.

Lennox loves snakes, the blonde woman behind him does not, however

Technically there’s no feeding of the lemurs allowed, but a group had some bananas and started feeding the lemurs so Mr. 7 and I got an amazing treat – they climbed right up to us and we could touch them while they were eating.

Guy feeds three lemurs on his back with a banana

The lemurs only wanted bananas, but a pet was a good second-choice. Mr. 7 and I couldn’t get over how close they were getting to us, some jumped on people’s shoulders! Very cool.

Getting closer to the Lemurs than we have ever been!

The Zoo is quite big, we were there for 3 hours and didn’t see the entire thing (we saw a few things twice like the Owls; they are our favourite birds).