Il Dolce Far Niente: A Winter Day At The Zoo

March 2012

About two months ago I was diagnosed a repetitive strain injury in my heel. Due to that, a doctor kindly asked me not to do any activities. Since then I've done Indoor Cycling, which by the way is boring, as well as spent some time at the gym.

Today I did a bold move and decided to have a Sunday walk outdoors, the first one in about two months. Weather was gorgeous, temperature some degrees under zero, clear blue sky with the sun warming the air. I knew my heel would not tolerate heavy exercise, so decided to do a short walk (at the end it appeared to be some 8km ...). The weather insisted to take camera with me.

I have had time to look at my previous outdoor photos. Clearly one thing have been missing in them, i.e. proper pictures from animals, although there were several ones showing some pile of waste of them. That concluded where to go for a Sunday walk, to Korkeasaari island. There's the zoo of Helsinki, one of most important tourist attractions of Helsinki. Maybe now I could catch some photos as animals stay behind fences and could not disappear from my camera (well, as a matter of fact now I know that they can even do that).

There are two way to reach Korkeasaari (aka Högholmen) island by public, a ferry from the Market Square (at summer time) and by road via Mustikkamaa island (by walk, bicycle, bus etc). Did the latter.

Ticket cost 10 Eur per person. Funny to find some skis standing on the wall (some people had arrived by skiing!). There's a quite new bridge, a nice way to reach the island. Lots of snow everywhere, all paths were frozen and really slippery.

Didn't go inside of any animal house but stayed outside. Big cat species were my favourites, lions and leopards were astonishing. However, maybe seeing Lynx so near on a snowy place was the highlight.

Below are some photos. I have kept fence or window visible in most of the photos just to remind that I was at the zoo, and so were them, too.