I finally made it to Japan!!! I’ve been planning a Japan trip for years, however I didn’t quite intend for it to only include 2 pandas – I booked to go to Adventure World as well, and just a few weeks later, the announcement was made that the Adventure World pandas would return to China in July. So I was too late for them, but I wasn’t too late to see the final pandas in Japan at Ueno Zoo – Japanese-born twins Xiao Xiao 晓晓 and Lei Lei 蕾蕾!
After a day visiting Omaha, I hopped on a quick flight to Saint Louis, Missouri ready for a week of conferencing – that was actually in the Saint Louis Zoo! The zoo is kitted out to host a range of events, including conferences so in all the breaks I headed out to explore what I could, and on our welcome day we even got a tour from some of the great volunteers and got to do some special activities^
Highlights definitely include seeing the cheetah cubs, feeding multiple giraffes and seeing a baby elephant who shares my birthday =D
I was headed to a conference in Saint Louis and had to make the most of the trip all the way there – so the weekend before the conference I headed to Omaha, Nebraska to check out the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium as it comes up on just about every single ‘top zoo in the USA’ list! No pandas of course, but still plenty to see and enough to easily fill a whole day of animal watching^
Had a great Autumnal weekend in Vienna and had plenty of time to see the whole of Schöbrunn Zoo across the two days. It was a very popular spot with many tourists visiting, in fact for sure this is the zoo that I’ve seen the most tourists in. Had great weather which meant almost all the animals were outside – makes for a good visit. It’s a large zoo so I definitely would have struggled to see everything in one day as well as dedicating a solid amount of time to the pandas, I think two days was pretty perfect!
The Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna, Austria was the first European zoo that I saw pandas in after my home zoo of Edinburgh way back in 2017 (when the last born cubs there were just tiny lil babies^). In 2018 the twins left Vienna for China, and in 2023 mama Yang Yang and her new partner Yuan Yuan (who I didn’t see) left for their return to China. Finally in April 2025, a brand new pair of pandas moved to Vienna! As soon as I heard the news, I booked myself a trip – welcome to Lan Yun and He Feng 🎉
