How Long Does it Take to Walk Home from the Zoo?

Today everyone was feeling up for another adventure, so we took a train to Rapperswil to visit the Kneiss Kinderzoo. This was mostly for Katie, since it was her birthday yesterday and we knew she would love seeing the animals, but we all ended up having a good time.

To enter the zoo you had to choose a person-shaped cutout to walk through.

We decided to go at lunch time since there was a popular Thai restaurant inside that Malorie has been wanting to try, and I love Thai food. It ended up being a buffet style restaurant, and by the time I got to the register at the end of the buffet line I had somehow amassed a tremendous quantity of food on the trays for my kids and I, and subsequently paid for the most expensive lunch ever - over $60! It was a combination of not understanding the menu, being rushed, and not speaking/reading German. Happily, it was delicious and the kids and I all enjoyed it, and packed up the leftovers to go. It was zoo time!

Wooden statue inside the restaurant. Katie called this "a queen" and wanted to pose in front of it.

First we passed an elephant exhibit. There were lots of elephants at this zoo! Even though we couldn't read the German displays, they were still entertaining.

Here you had to collect enough people on the scale to show how much an elephant eats every day.
120 kg is about 265 lbs.
When I got on the scale, together we weighed enough to push it down all the way.

And now here's a collection of other zoo animal photos, and one video of the kids inside the petting zoo exhibit.

This baby alpaca is just two days old! 

The zoo had more than one playground area, and they were all really interesting and fun - and WET! Fortunately it was another super hot day, so the kids were happy to be walking around in dripping wet clothes. If you want to see more action, check out these playground videos as well.

Lily being eaten by a dinosaur on the playground. 

There was a massive concrete whale on the playground!

It even had a working blowhole! That's how they initially got wet.

Lily sitting on the blowhole waiting for it to go off - haha! 

You could also go inside the belly of the whale and get rained on.

Katie looked like this the whole time the kids were playing on the playgrounds. Good thing we did the animals first and saved the playgrounds for the end, so she got to see all of those!

More water play - a screw used to lift water onto a ramp.

A super tall and fast slide! 

Even faster when you are all wet!

More water features! The kid in the back is rocking back and forth on a platform that makes the water spout out.

Jumping on these pedestals makes them shoot out jets of water!

Another absurdly high climbing structure!

After the playgrounds we saw a sea lion show. Sadly Katie slept through the entire show! But we took photos and video to show her later.

Mary, Joey, and Lily are sitting together near the center of this photo. I'm not with them because I had to sit in a place where I could put the stroller, and they wanted to sit up there for a better view.

We stayed at the zoo until it closed, and then left through the crazy shaped gates and headed into Rapperswil.

Mary sitting on her "moon" letter

The kids were hoping that they toy store they spotted on our last visit would be open, but unfortunately it was not. It was dinner time, but we had plenty of Thai leftovers to eat so we didn't need to buy anything else. Still, we couldn't help walking into a Swiss McDonald's restaurant just to check out the menu. It was expensive! A Big Mac was like $12, and a Happy Meal was nearly $8. The kids said we should never eat there while we are here! We roamed around the village streets for a little while, popped into a grocery to buy some more diapers for Katie and a few snacks, and then headed for the playground at the end of the wooden bridge across Lake Zurich which I had promised we would return to another day.

On the way to the playground, we checked the train times at the station and saw there was a 7:30pm train back to Pfaffikon. It was about 6:30pm by now, so I told them we could play on the playground for about an hour before heading home.

The playground had a whole circuit of exercise equipment
(intended for adults, but still fun for kids!)

They all tried all the machines!

Lily at the top! She's getting more adventurous in her climbing.
She doesn't always go to the top, but this one was just the right size for her!

Balancing the see saw 

Joey has a loose tooth and is wiggling it all the time. 

As 6:30 approached, we hated for the day to end. It was such a gorgeous evening out, and I suggested walking across the bridge back to Pfaffikon. Malorie had told me it takes about an hour to walk to Rapperswil, and that sounded manageable. I had a stroller for Katie, and the kids seemed full of energy, and we had plenty of water and snacks along. I told them that we could either take the train or walk home, but that if they walked, I would give them the money that I would have spent on train tickets. They waffled for a bit when I said it would probably take more than an hour to walk home, but in the end we decided to go for it!

The sun was just starting to set as we set off for home, but I thought we would have plenty of time before it got really dark. 

In good spirits, with purple mountains in the background 

Being weird on the bridge 

Watching the sunset and the birds on the water

Looking back towards Rapperswil Castle

Tickling Katie

It didn't take too long to cross the bridge, and after that I didn't think it would be too far to get back to my sister's house. I was wrong. It was pretty far to walk still, and it was getting darker and darker. The kids were starting to complain, and we were all questioning our decision to walk back. But we really had no choice but to continue on, so we kept walking. And walking. And walking. And it got darker. And darker. And darker. I wanted to call and ask Malorie and Siraj to come and pick us up, but unfortunately I didn't have a phone with me. There were several points along the way where we weren't sure which road to take, but we knew the general direction to head in, so we persevered, and finally, after walking for two hours straight, and lots of bribery from me (chocolate! ice cream!) WE MADE IT!