Liege, down the fishy lane

I have always wanted to see the underwater life. Best would be to snorkel, or scuba dive ; but I cannot depend on such wishful thinkings. The Aquarium's I had visited have been abysmally dissapointing. However, when i scoured Belgium tourism guidebooks there seemed to be a good one at Liege... A distant rustle..a gush of enthusiasm, and I decided to pay it a visit.

The place is actually an aquarium, cum a natural history museum and a science museum. Wow, its going to be back to memory lane then. Since childhood I had a fascination for natural history and science. I recall going to Science museum at Lucknow in 5th standard, 1991. I think it had just opened and was a big thing in India then. The credit ofcourse goes to Mom,Dad who knew I would like that and took me there.


The first impression wasn't a great one. I found the fish cubicles to be tooooo small. Nooo! I wanted to see fishes in a much bigger glass pond. But as I intermixed with excited children and their eager dadies & momies, I started enjoying the rich marine life on display...

Thats my spotted seahorse or yellow sea horse, hippocampus kuda. What a delicate litte thing.. How does it hold its own in the deep see water ???


Naturally, the biggest draw was the big pool that contained sharks! They seemed to be pretty agitated, or perhaps its not in their nature to rest and relax in a corner like other fishes. Round and round, up and down they went, occasionally baring their teeths. These were obviously not the great white's ofcourse but they were sharks all right.

In the same building that housed the aquarium, there was a natural history museum. Thats the skeleton of the blue whale! I initially thought it must be a dinasour! But on closer look ( basically at its tail, which gave away its identity ) it was obviously a gigantic fish.

There was also skeleton of anaconda, which was huge ! I have a video of that. There were other skeletons too and a very big section on birds. But what astonished me most were the giant crustacians on display. Simply huge crabs..let me take a shot..2feet by 1feet, and I am being very realistic. It must be scary to encounter them in real. Then there were gigantic beetles too, around them I wouldn't be caught alive. Well amazon basin looks like a tough call now. Kidding...

Over all quite an interesting day.