Bois de la Batie

On Sunday morning we went to Bois de la Batie, a little animal park over near Lancy. We drove. The closest the tram gets is the circle in Jonction, at the bottom of the hill, which we didn't feel like walking up with little kids. The alternative from the right bank is to walk or cycle through St Jean, and then cross the Rhone on the railway bridge.  From here you can look down on the confluence of the Arve and the Rhone and you get a great view of the city as well.
The park is mainly birds; ducks, geese and swans paddle around on the pond, peacocks strut around on the paths, standing on the railings and yelling at the top of their voices to make small children cry. Entrance is free and gates open from 7am to 8pm at the moment, I would guess that in the winter this changes. And if you happen to miss the opening hours a large pond fronts onto a viewing terrace outside the gates. In the form of a school trip, we also saw pigs, sheep, rabbits, goats, ponies, peacocks and turtles. A good enough selection to keep the big one fascinated for quite a while. Access to the animals is really good, you can get right to the fences round their enclosures and because the animals are small and few, the enclosures don't need to be vast, you can still get a good view of them if you are under 4.

Bunny snacks

We had lunch opposite the rabbits, whilst they also had lunch.  The bunnies were happy to nibble on the girls fingers when they tried to poke them through the mesh fence.  Both of them in turn jumped away slightly alarmed at the curious attention. Oh the terrors of a bunny!
I reckon without really trying we managed to spend close to two hours in the park, wandering pointing and poking at the various bits of wild life. Even the little one actually managed to engage with the animals here. She really liked some of the birds waddling around on the floor of their different aviaries  There's a water feature in the middle of the park, which was very welcome on a very hot day, the second we got in the park both the girls tried to climb in and both got very wet.
One of the top features of the park for Sarah and I were the occasional wafting aromas from the nearby cafe in the woods. We didn't actually get there, we'll save that for another time, but every time we smelt something it made us wish we were sitting in the cafe - how's that, a recommendation to go eat somewhere even though I've never been there myself. We will get up and go there and come back on what it's like.
After the animals we took the girls to play in the park, a neat paddling pool on three levels, which I think was a good bit colder than some of the smaller ones we find in the parks near us got the big one very excited, but the small one, who is generally warier of them anyway, was less than convinced and only really got a toe in. The play area probably caters to a good age range of kids, and then there is a lot of open green space where bigger kids can play wide games. I hear the place is good for barbecues, and I can imagine in the evenings throughout the summer the park will still be a busy place full of the folks of Lancy enjoying the countryside surroundings.
This is definitely a good place to go with the kids where you can suddenly find a good few hours have been lost, given there are so many different things to do.  As I say, we didn't even get to walking around the woods, nor did we make a trip to the cafe; that's all to do next time.