Artis Royal Zoo – Amsterdam Zoo

Artis Royal Zoo – Amsterdam Zoo

Located at – Plantage Kerklaan 38-40, 1018 CZ Amsterdam, Netherlands.

   

I visited Amsterdam for a week in January this year and I wanted a clean, family friendly day out after days of seeing many of the other activities Amsterdam had to offer.

My partner was very reluctant to go to the zoo as I think he felt it didn’t really fit in with the Amsterdam image or the trip he had in mind for a couple’s getaway. Plus he had never heard of the zoo and had no idea Amsterdam even had one.

When we told people we had visited the zoo on our trip most people laughed at us and were surprised to find out Amsterdam has a zoo.

But turned out to be a great day, my partner and I both loved it and he even apologised for being so negative regarding the idea to begin with. It was an excellent way to spend a couple of hours.

The zoo is located right in the centre of Amsterdam at the address given above. It can be reached easily by car (car park available at €9), by tram 9 from Amsterdam Central or by tram 14 from Dam or by train to Waterlooplein which is the nearest train station and is roughly a 10 minute walk away.

We paid €20.50 each to get in and then an additional €2 for a map. You have to pay if you want a map which is a bit unfair but we felt the map was beneficial as it allowed us to plan our route and ensure we had saw the majority of the zoo so I would recommend buying a map.

Was a great day. Lots of interesting, exciting things to see. Think the highlight of the day was the baby giraffe (that was still easily about 10 feet tall) which caused a lot of excitement.

The only negative aspect of the visit was with the aquarium. Although the zoo doesn’t close until 6pm the aquarium closes much earlier at roughly 4.30pm and so we never manged to see everything in here. If we had known it would be closing earlier than the rest of the zoo we would have altered our route and gone here first. When we bought our tickets it was not mentioned to us and it was not mentioned anywhere on the map – they should tell guests this so they can plan ahead and take this into consideration.