Al Ain Zoo, Our Favorite Place

Finally, the best climate of the year is coming to the desert. On Saturday morning, I took the kids and Gelosa for a picnic in the Al Ain Zoo. The entrance ticket for an adult has risen from 2 dhs to 15 dhs (around 50 cents to 4 dollars within these 2 years) . It's free for kids under 6.

The zoo was quite big in its size but there were not that many different kinds of animals. The place was improved so much compared to our first visit. We saw very stressful animals living in small cages back then.  But now, the animals looked relaxed in beautiful planned areas that designed to be more alike to their natural habitat.

Gemma and I grabbed a bunch of yummy junk food earlier and we couldn't wait to eat. We found a lovely green area next to the mosque for our picnic.

There was a zebra tour train that we had our eyes on. Gemma got us the first front-row seats. Oskar was talking non-stop with excitement and somehow, he also made friends with the Arabic speaking people sitting behind us.

The train tour took us to see the monkeys, ibex, oryx and etc. It then stopped by a small kiosk shop. The man from the store came a few times with trays of ice-cream, chips, and soft drinks. The huge mistake I made was buying the ice creams. Soon as the train took off again, Oskar was already covered with the mess from the ice cream that was melting with lightning speed.  Gemma then handed her ice cream to me because of a sudden tummy ache. "I need to puke!" she said. I quickly took out a plastic bag for her.  Meanwhile, Oskar's chocolate ice cream kept dropping on my shirt and pant. So Gemma threw up all the way even after the train stopped. When the next batch of visitors was getting on the train, we were still trying to clean up the seat.

Someone who (it was Oskar) got the ice cream all over his face, hands and clothes did not have enough train ride and was making a scene.  I ended up taking Oskar's half-finished ice cream and trashed it with the pukey bag - boy, he was MAD! I took everyone off to the sidewalk and tried to ignore Oskar's protest. Thank God for Gelosa being there as a helping hand. I turned to look after Gemma, the poor girl was feeling sick and weak. She was just sitting on the grass field with a blank expression.

Feeling quite frustrated, I started goofing around to make the kids laugh. With some sparks from their eyes, we quickly moved on with our zoo trip. Gemma was getting better and took out her scratch book to draw her favourite animals for her daddy. And Oskar was very excited about every animal he saw. The second half of our outing ended very nicely.