A manul, or Pallas's cat, is a mongolian wildcat that looks like this:
A hilariously expressive, usually grumpy, adorable chonky creature. And I adore them. So, when we'd been looking around for things to do in Munich and I randomly checked the zoo website to see if they had anything worth seeing and found they had one/some (never quite worked out how many there might be), I got very excited and made the zoo a must-see for our time there.
Given our experiences in Australia - if you go to the zoo in the middle of the day you're fairly likely to see exactly bugger-all in terms of animals, who will have all gone to sleep somewhere you can't see them - we aimed to get there as early as possible, which meant getting there by 9am. This meant getting up pretty early and eating on the run, but we were getting used to that and we managed to get there - amongst what seemed to be endless school groups - and through the gate.
First hurdle - the manul, despite now featuring prominently in the promotional pictures (it's even on the cover of the German language map of the zoo) weren't showing on the map. So, we had to have a couple of conversations with zoo staff just to work out where the damn things were. But get there we did, and I finally got to see the creature I'd been waiting so long for.
I could have watched it sit there, doing very little beyond blinking and looking grumpy, for hours. But there were other things to see so we decided we'd come back later and off we went. There wasn't a huge amount else to see - at least not that was especially active. We went back for another round of manul and got lucky; it was moving around a bit, so I took a few more pics.
After the zoo we took a fairly convoluted route to get to Nymphenburg Palace - after a quick stop for lunch at a nearby cafe, which was excellent - and had a look around there. Then it was back into the city, where we went and found the famous Munich surfing river, and took a bike tour (we sat, he drove) around the English Gardens.
The manul.
Capybaras.
Flamingos.
A wolf. Perhaps part of a gang?
Moar manul.
It moves!
Look at that fat tail.
Goodbye, chonker.
Arctic fox in its summer coat. They're very cute.
Please don't throw pretzels to the animals. Only in Germany!
Arctic hares.
Snowy owls. Getting a shot where they looked at the camera took some time.
Polar bear.
Another, smaller polar bear.
Squirrel!
Back to the young polar bear.
Moar squirrel!
Ran into a keeper with an owl.
I think that's a marmot.
Nymphenburg.
Such false advertising. I saw no worms. Not one!
Surfing in Munich.
Bike tour of the English Garden.
The large, white goose freaked these poor girls out. They ended up running away.
Chinese pavilion.
I still don't know how to sit for a picture.
And that was our last day in Munich. Next stop: Vienna!
