Emirates' First A-380

"We congratulate Airbus for having created a greener, cleaner, quieter, smarter aircraft," said Chief Executive Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum.

Emirates took delivery of its first Airbus A380 and yesterday it was in Hamburg being feted by the airline and vetted by the press.

The aircrew who were selected as hosts for the event were made to stand on the tarmac and pretend to be aeroplanes as they showed off their new uniform.

Press release images of the plane's interior can be seen here and here. This aircraft will be flying the Dubai to New York route.

The image I have included above was shamelessly lifted from Alexander's blog!

Tierpark Berlin

If people go to the zoo in Berlin, most will head for the Berlin Zoo in the middle of the city and home to Knut: the most famous polar bear in the world.

Yesterday, we took J's boys to Tierpark Berlin - a zoopark located in what was East Berlin before the wall came down.

It was awesome. As the biggest zoological zoopark in Europe standing on 160 hectares, it would take at least 2 days to walk around and to see all the animals on display. We walked our feet off for 6 hours and still didn't get to see everything.

Less crowded than the Berlin Zoo, the expansive park surroundings also contribute to the feeling that there are fewer people visiting the zoo than there actually are within the grounds. The only times that we ran into crowds were during the big cats' feeding time and in the reptile house - the latter because it started to rain and everyone headed indoors.

One thing that stood out for me, of which I'm in total awe, was the number of animals who had young babies at their heels. The zoo must have one of the most successful breeding programs in the world and I'm sure that a major contributing factor is the relaxed and calm nature of the zoo, as well as the peaceful surroundings of the park.

We saw baby black bears, elephants, oxen, antelope, rhinoceros, giraffes, tigers, black panthers, leopards, wolves, flamingos and lynx - just to name a few.

Staring Showdown

Pelican

Meeting with a Porcupine

Heading to the gate for lunch

The Giraffe enclosure

Green Mamba - although it looked yellow to us

Lemur - you got to move it, move it!

Black bear cubs

Black Mambas - they looked grey

The animals were alert and interacted with the human visitors more than I've seen in other zoos. The Tierpark must have one of the largest exhibition of birds of prey - I saw so many different eagles that I didn't even know existed.

If you ever get to Berlin, take time to go to the Tierpark Berlin. From Alexanderplatz station, you can take the U-Bahn U5 line and get off at the Tierpark station which exits right outside the entrance gate. Entry is Eu11.00 per adult and Eu5.50 per child under 16, or a family daypass for 2 adults and 2 kids is Eu29.00.

Don't forget to take some bottled water with you. There are cafeterias dotted around the grounds, but some of the walks in between them can be quite long and dry. We also found that a lot of families opted to bring food with them and it was great to see them stretched out on blankets under the trees, enjoying the shade as they broke out their picnic lunches.

Oh, and if you have a dog, you can take them in for free provided that they are on a short leash. I thought that it was wonderful to see the dogs interacting with the other animals, although there were a few worried expressions on some of them when confronted with the tigers which were about 20x bigger. I could almost hear them having second thoughts about ever again chasing the neighbourhood cats - just in case one of these bigger cats was lurking around the corner, lying in wait!

The boys about to be eaten by a sabre-tooth tiger!

We had a great day out and the kids behaved really well which made it an even better experience!

Great Barrier Reef

We're in Berlin for the week and tomorrow we'll spend the day with the kids. On Friday we leave for a week in Zurich.

Since arriving in Germany, we've been to Dresden and Bad Karlshafen - more on these places in later posts.

Before leaving Australia, we went up to Queensland where we got in a day of diving on the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns. It's our second visit to dive here, and to be honest, I don't think that we're big-boat divers.

The boats that go out to the reef typically carry between 80-100 people with a mix of snorkellers and divers. It's a well set up operation and everything is taken care of by the competent crew, but they do play it safe by visiting the same places day after day. Those poor dive masters must get really bored from swimming around the same coral bommies! Plus, the competency of some of our fellow divers leaves us bemused. 20 minutes into our second dive, one of our party indicated that he only had 50 bars of air left in his tank, (we still had about 180 bars left), so our whole dive was aborted so that he could be taken back to the boat.

We got in 3 dives and saw some interesting stuff, but nothing that had us raving as per the Musandam or Maldives. I think that we've been spoiled by diving in some great areas of the world!

Spine-cheeked Anemone fish

Feeding Blue Spotted Ray

Pretty Purple Hard Coral

Funny little things - I've never bothered to find out what they're called!

Green plant life amongst hard red coral

Feeding Hawksbill Turtle breaking off chunks of coral

The inside of a clam shell

J finning around a bommie

A friendly Napolean Wrasse who swam with us for the entire first dive, keeping us together as if playing tour guide and divemaster!

A tiny Nudibranch - about 8cm long

Pink Anemone fish

A sleeping Green Turtle. I don't know who would have gotten the bigger fright if he had woken up - me or him, as I was only about 50cm away!

If we ever go back to the Great Barrier reef to dive, we'll only consider a live-aboard dive boat that takes smaller groups and goes out for 3-4 days at a time, and to places where the big day-boats don't go.