Pandas, penguins, sharks and lions are all within a drive of the city, and so is a pony club that takes riders from age 4. Several picks are indoors, so they work in rain or cold. Here's what we checked, from the zoo in Casa de Campo to a drive-through safari.
Animals from five continents share the zoo, including giant pandas, koalas, Sumatran elephants and white rhinos. The glass-pyramid aquarium, Spain's first tropical marine aquarium when it opened in 1995, holds about 330 species, two 18-meter walk-through tunnels and a shark tank. Sea lions Tau, Carlota and Saba star in a short daily demo, and a small train loops past the pandas, meerkats and lemurs.
Faunia recreates habitats from around the world, several of them indoors. In Los Polos, more than a hundred penguins from six species swim and nest in a hall kept near freezing. La Jungla is a humid Amazon rainforest where a tropical storm breaks every hour and manatees swim through a tunnel at its entrance. Outside are a farm with dwarf goats and a canyon of 18 life-size dinosaur replicas.
Safari Madrid is a drive-through wildlife park near Aldea del Fresno. Families drive their own car along a route where giraffes, zebras, rhinos, elephants, bison and lions roam around the vehicles, then park and walk the rest: a petting corner, a reptile house, a crocodile grotto, a mini zoo and the bird of prey show, the first free-flight one in Spain when it began in 1978.
A 6,000-square-meter aquarium on the first floor of the Madrid Xanadú mall, with 10,000 animals across 20 marine habitats. The open-ocean hall is a domed walkway where blacktip and gray reef sharks, rays, and a loggerhead turtle swim around you. The polar zone has a column of snow kids can touch, and the Passport game handed out at the desk ends with a medal.
A riding school founded in 1982 as Pony Club La Moraleja, one of Spain's first schools to teach on ponies. Kids aged 4 to 9 ride Shetland ponies in the Mini Pony Club, in the arena, out in the countryside or doing vaulting. From about 9 or 10, riders move on to horses, with arena lessons and planned trail rides. It also runs therapeutic riding and birthday parties.
Pandas, penguins, sharks and lions are all within a drive of the city, and so is a pony club that takes riders from age 4. Several picks are indoors, so they work in rain or cold. Here's what we checked, from the zoo in Casa de Campo to a drive-through safari.
Animals from five continents share the zoo, including giant pandas, koalas, Sumatran elephants and white rhinos. The glass-pyramid aquarium, Spain's first tropical marine aquarium when it opened in 1995, holds about 330 species, two 18-meter walk-through tunnels and a shark tank. Sea lions Tau, Carlota and Saba star in a short daily demo, and a small train loops past the pandas, meerkats and lemurs.
Faunia recreates habitats from around the world, several of them indoors. In Los Polos, more than a hundred penguins from six species swim and nest in a hall kept near freezing. La Jungla is a humid Amazon rainforest where a tropical storm breaks every hour and manatees swim through a tunnel at its entrance. Outside are a farm with dwarf goats and a canyon of 18 life-size dinosaur replicas.
Safari Madrid is a drive-through wildlife park near Aldea del Fresno. Families drive their own car along a route where giraffes, zebras, rhinos, elephants, bison and lions roam around the vehicles, then park and walk the rest: a petting corner, a reptile house, a crocodile grotto, a mini zoo and the bird of prey show, the first free-flight one in Spain when it began in 1978.
A 6,000-square-meter aquarium on the first floor of the Madrid Xanadú mall, with 10,000 animals across 20 marine habitats. The open-ocean hall is a domed walkway where blacktip and gray reef sharks, rays, and a loggerhead turtle swim around you. The polar zone has a column of snow kids can touch, and the Passport game handed out at the desk ends with a medal.
A riding school founded in 1982 as Pony Club La Moraleja, one of Spain's first schools to teach on ponies. Kids aged 4 to 9 ride Shetland ponies in the Mini Pony Club, in the arena, out in the countryside or doing vaulting. From about 9 or 10, riders move on to horses, with arena lessons and planned trail rides. It also runs therapeutic riding and birthday parties.