A bit of the beaten track but more than wort a visit. Especialy if you are on a bike or motorcycle…read more Good burgers. Friendly staff. Good selection of bewerages.

Very easy to get to from the City Center. You take #16 bus from central station and the last stop…read morebefore it heads back is the zoo. You can pay on the bus and it does not take very long. In the summer, you can take a boat but this was not an option in April when I visited. The main gate has a little cafeteria and bathroom. The zoo is located on an island and you walk across a bridge to get to the zoo. It is not a large zoo. It has a good number of animals to see. I really enjoyed the seeing the lions. I spent about 2 hours here and pretty much saw everything. It was not very crowded at all. Check what time of the year you are visiting. The weather was still chilly in April and only 1 restaurant was open. The gift shop was open but did not offer to much. The only item I found that said Helsinki Zoo was a postcard. Most of the items on sale are pretty generic non-branded animal related items. Overall, it was a nice visit.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my…read more As far as zoos go, this one is pretty good. While parking is not precisely convenient, you do get a nice little walk through the woods to arrive there a gigantic bear statue greets you. Unlike say, Berlin, you get the sense that these animals have plenty of space and are generally weather appropriate. I really enjoyed the information (in three languages, Finnish, Swedish, and English) about what level of threatened / endangered a particular animal is in the wild and what efforts this zoo is taking to help the natural environment. The cafes are well located throughout the zoo and the organization makes sense as well. Some odd (to me) bits. The jungle house (tropical house) has a weird insect area that looks like it was built a very long time ago and the insects have just been left to themselves. Creepy crawly indeed. The other odd bit if there are at least a dozen peacocks roaming free around the zoo. I don't know why. They are loud and not afraid of people and sometimes block entire paths with strutting. It's just weird to have so many peacocks in a relatively small space. As an added bonus we visited during hatching season so if you happened across a goose who was still sitting on her nest then her mate would hiss at you and sometimes try to chase you off the path. A bit silly but you know, nice that they all have somewhere to nest (I guess?!?) Definitely a nice half day for families with small children.