Erin and I took off to Ramstein for the weekend and I used, yet again, the handy dandy "attractions" selection on my GPS. I recommend it to anyone who's looking for something fun to do. I just hit that button, select "all attractions" and see what is within the distance I'm willing to travel. We went to Trier of course, which I'll post later, but first I wanted to show you ANOTHER fun zoo. This one was definitely not as large or spectacular as the Gelsenkirchen zoo, but definitely a good 1-2 hour place to enjoy and very kid friendly. There were camels, lions, a bear, petting zoo with lots of cute goats and numerous domestic animals. There were two rather mentionable things: first, there were raccoons. I think that's pretty cool, most zoos don't have raccoons and they were very active searching for food.
Second, there was a nature walk that had educational stops for the kids that were, mostly, translated in English. It showed all the local trees and animals and had benches to sit and try and identify the things you saw.
They are still working on the zoo, but the most impressive area was the reptiles. There were quite a few iguanas, frogs and snakes. Not to mention a couple small monkeys, sloths and tri-colored squirrels.
If you are interested, here is the website for more information:
http://www.kaiserslautern.de/leben_in_kl/freizeit_und_sport/zoo/index.html?lang=en It was only 4.50 Euro to enter and there was a playground and Grillhut. Parking was free, next to a beautiful pond you can spend another 25 minutes or so enjoying. If you take bikes, the trails right there are beautiful and trek off into the woods.
