Some kids would trade any playground for a goat to pet or a pony to watch. These are the places where animals are the main event: feeding stations and petting farms, riding arenas, an aquarium of sharks and rays, and museums where a tiger stands close enough to study. Here's what we checked, from giraffe feeding at Attica Zoological Park to the Zoological Museum's bird dioramas.
The only zoo in Greece, home to more than 1,500 animals of about 220 species across 81 hectares. The African Savannah has giraffes, zebras, white rhinos and cheetahs, with a giraffe feeding station.
Elsewhere are Asian elephants, chimpanzees, lions, tigers, and wolves and brown bears in the Greek Forest, plus three walk-through aviaries, a lemur forest and a farm where kids can pet goats and ponies.
Kouvaras Equestrian Club is a riding yard in the East Attica countryside with outdoor arenas, six horses and a club house restaurant set among farm animals: mini goats, a mini bull, mini donkeys, Falabella ponies, ducks, chickens, an alpaca and wallabies. Kids can meet the animals on a farm tour, watch the horses train and use the club's playground. Riding lessons run from beginner to jumping.
The Hellenic Riding Club is where organized riding began in Greece. Army officers and amateur riders founded it just before World War II, and after the war it moved to its grounds in Paradisos, which became the country's first major center for competitive riding.
Today it runs a riding school alongside the sand arenas where its show-jumping competitions take place.
Pyrgos Vasilissis, also called the Queen's Tower, is a 200-hectare estate built around a small neo-Gothic castle that King Otto raised for Queen Amalia, modeled on Hohenschwangau in Bavaria. Today the Serpieri family owns it and runs a dairy farm and an organic vineyard on the grounds.
Visits take in the tower and the gardens. It suits kids who like castles and history more than toddlers after a run-around.
XPLORE fills 4,500 square meters inside the Golden Hall mall with three zones. Science has hands-on exhibits on sound, light, air and water, including a giant floor piano and a water table. Adventure has a castle mirror maze, a dinosaur jungle, a construction zone with a life-size digger, a TV studio and a race track. Oceans is an aquarium with 20 tanks of sharks, rays and jellyfish.
The Zoological Museum belongs to the University of Athens biology department, and its collections date back to 1858. Across 2,200 m² it shows around 500 mammals as mounts or skeletons, including a tiger, about 2,500 birds covering every species found in Greece, plus nests and eggs, and around 1,000 reptiles, amphibians and fish. Dioramas recreate Greek and world habitats, with a focus on endangered Greek species.
The permanent Natural History Exhibition runs through eight galleries: zoology, insects, reptiles, marine life, plants, birds, geology and fossils. The first botany halls were designed with support from the Natural History Museum in London.
At the GAIA Centre, "Climate Change and Us" is an interactive exhibition, and a digital dome screens animated films about dinosaurs, coral reefs and space. NATU Restaurant sits in the museum garden.
Some kids would trade any playground for a goat to pet or a pony to watch. These are the places where animals are the main event: feeding stations and petting farms, riding arenas, an aquarium of sharks and rays, and museums where a tiger stands close enough to study. Here's what we checked, from giraffe feeding at Attica Zoological Park to the Zoological Museum's bird dioramas.
The only zoo in Greece, home to more than 1,500 animals of about 220 species across 81 hectares. The African Savannah has giraffes, zebras, white rhinos and cheetahs, with a giraffe feeding station.
Elsewhere are Asian elephants, chimpanzees, lions, tigers, and wolves and brown bears in the Greek Forest, plus three walk-through aviaries, a lemur forest and a farm where kids can pet goats and ponies.
Kouvaras Equestrian Club is a riding yard in the East Attica countryside with outdoor arenas, six horses and a club house restaurant set among farm animals: mini goats, a mini bull, mini donkeys, Falabella ponies, ducks, chickens, an alpaca and wallabies. Kids can meet the animals on a farm tour, watch the horses train and use the club's playground. Riding lessons run from beginner to jumping.
The Hellenic Riding Club is where organized riding began in Greece. Army officers and amateur riders founded it just before World War II, and after the war it moved to its grounds in Paradisos, which became the country's first major center for competitive riding.
Today it runs a riding school alongside the sand arenas where its show-jumping competitions take place.
Pyrgos Vasilissis, also called the Queen's Tower, is a 200-hectare estate built around a small neo-Gothic castle that King Otto raised for Queen Amalia, modeled on Hohenschwangau in Bavaria. Today the Serpieri family owns it and runs a dairy farm and an organic vineyard on the grounds.
Visits take in the tower and the gardens. It suits kids who like castles and history more than toddlers after a run-around.
XPLORE fills 4,500 square meters inside the Golden Hall mall with three zones. Science has hands-on exhibits on sound, light, air and water, including a giant floor piano and a water table. Adventure has a castle mirror maze, a dinosaur jungle, a construction zone with a life-size digger, a TV studio and a race track. Oceans is an aquarium with 20 tanks of sharks, rays and jellyfish.
The Zoological Museum belongs to the University of Athens biology department, and its collections date back to 1858. Across 2,200 m² it shows around 500 mammals as mounts or skeletons, including a tiger, about 2,500 birds covering every species found in Greece, plus nests and eggs, and around 1,000 reptiles, amphibians and fish. Dioramas recreate Greek and world habitats, with a focus on endangered Greek species.
The permanent Natural History Exhibition runs through eight galleries: zoology, insects, reptiles, marine life, plants, birds, geology and fossils. The first botany halls were designed with support from the Natural History Museum in London.
At the GAIA Centre, "Climate Change and Us" is an interactive exhibition, and a digital dome screens animated films about dinosaurs, coral reefs and space. NATU Restaurant sits in the museum garden.
