Worth the expense!

Husband was loathe to pay the entrance fee which is 25 euros each and 16 for children but it really is worth it. Even the charity money box in the foyer is well designed, you put a coin in and watch it roll round and round for ages, my son wanted coin after coin.. :/ Try putting in several small coins at once for maximum amusement. I do not normally like zoos or aquariums. I think humans would do better to save the natural world and not imprison creatures for our entertainment, but my son is too young to go snorkelling yet and I want to try and instill an interest and love of nature and other creatures so I decided to visit mostly for him. As fish prisons go, this is a five star all-inclusive luxury hotel. If you're going to be incarcerated as an aquatic organism this place would be top of your list. It's massive, the tanks really look like it does under the sea, with plants and rocks and while I daresay it might get dull swimming round it all day every day, you cannot possibly see everything in just one visit here so the inmates themselves are hopeful as content as possible whilst being stared at virtually their entire lives. There's places to hide and it all looks beautiful. The first bit you go in has a bit of garden with iguanas which you can get very very close to. You could almost touch them. I hope nobody does. Then there is a long fake sort of wood and rope bridge kiddies will like. My son loved the perspex tunnel you have to crawl through. So did I. In the middle is a little dome a child can stand up in. It's as near to being underwater scuba diving as possible on dry land. The tank with almost neon corals is astonishing and makes you incredibly sad all reefs on earth are in danger. I could watch this tank alone for hours. I had to wait ages for a couple to move from in front of it in fact. They have specially put seats in front of this exhibit to spare people's legs from their fascination. The centre pieces are an enormous column of water which you can walk around in a spiral and the huge viewing window, which I think is the largest in Europe. It is truly amazing to see sharks so close, the undersides of rays, fishes and starfish. All of them so beautiful and all declining and vulnerable thanks to human lebensraum and habitat destruction. 90% of fish populations on earth have gone since the sixties. Truly terrifying, an unbounded horror. I really don't like to see creatures which swim vast distances in the wild in aquariums, especially not turtles, unless they are there because they're injured and convalescing. I think someone said there was a turtle here but I did not see it on my visit. However, my son loved this place, said it was his best day ever, so that was good. As I said, I'm generally ambivalent about these places in view of the sixth extinction, but this aquarium is probably the best you will ever see. I haven't eaten fish for forty years, I stopped when I was seven years old. You can too. Fish are friends ;) x