Oh, hi, Ohio

A couple months ago I embarked on some business travel to visit research collaborators in Cincinnati, Ohio. While I was there, I figured I might as well enjoy some of the city, so I had planned to visit the zoo and ended up getting to stop by the art museum as well. I flew into the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) in Hebron, Kentucky. The airport was bigger than I expected, with just under fifty gates spread out across two terminals. From the airport, I took a TANK (Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky) bus into Cincinnati, then a Metro bus up to the zoo.

The Cincinnati Zoo is a decent size – 75 acres, about twice Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo’s 35 acres and similar to the Singapore Zoo’s 69 acres – with variable admissions costs depending on projected attendance; if possible, buy your tickets as far in advance as you can. I spent a little over three hours there, including a late lunch, but wouldn’t have minded an hour or two more if I hadn’t had to leave to get to my hotel. When I visited, because it was already fall and past peak season, not all the dining options were available, and some of the shows and other activities weren’t running.

There were most of the usual suspects you expect to see when you go to a zoo, including zebras, flamingos, penguins, giraffes, and a variety of apes, birds, and reptiles. A number of the African animals that wouldn’t eat and/or gore each other to death got to hang out together, separated from the lions, which were surprisingly active, by a nice deep moat. I also got to see African penguins (by the flamingos), little blue penguins (next to the kangaroos), and some rockhopper and king penguins in the Birds of the World building. Somehow, I managed to miss the elephants and didn’t have time for Cat Canyon or Gorilla World, but I covered most of the rest of the zoo, and a fair number of the animals were out/active, probably because it wasn’t 8000 degrees out like the last time I was at the zoo in Chicago.

Clockwise from top left: lion, ostrich, gibbon, grey crowned crane

One of the reasons I decided to visit the Cincinnati Zoo is that it’s home to Fiona, the hippo who became famous after she was born six weeks premature at 29 pounds (baby hippos typically weigh 100 pounds) and the zoo started posting videos about her. She now also has a baby brother, Fritz, but the family was still being introduced out of the public eye at the time of my visit. At Hippo Cove, when I got there, only one hippo was out in the public part of their home, and I think it was Fiona, so I did get to see her at least. Overall, it was a pretty nice zoo, not too crowded and with a good variety of animals. The layout was okay, though there was some backtracking required to see some of the exhibits. I did have a bit of trouble finding the African penguins, and to see the little blue penguins I had to take a one-way path through the kangaroo exhibit, but for the most part there’s an outer main path that passes by most of the animals.

Little blue penguin

Later in the trip, my former coworker and I went to the Cincinnati Art Museum. Admission is free, though special events may be ticketed. The museum contains a variety of paintings, sculptures, pottery, photographs, etc. from past and present around the world, though it’s mostly American and European art. There were Greek vases, a mummy, teapots, a couple Andy Warhols, a multitude of oil paintings of old English nobles, coffee urns generously donated by P&G, and plenty more. One of the more unique areas of the museum featured works by artists who were either from or spent a portion of their career in Cincinnati; it was interesting to see some more local art that was directly related to the city. We were at the museum for a couple hours, which was enough time to see everything pretty quickly. If you took more time reading about and admiring each piece, you could be there for another hour or two, but I’m not a huge art history person and the museum was closing anyway.

Other highlights of my trip: 1) I did get to try Graeter’s ice cream. Graeter’s is a Cincinnati-based chain that handmakes its ice cream using a small-batch “French pot” process that results in denser ice cream. I tried their Boldly Bearcat flavor, a mascarpone ice cream with Oreos and chocolate chips named for the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. It was good, but I didn’t find it that creamy, which could just have been the flavor I chose, and I would still argue I like Cornell Dairy ice cream better. 2) The hotel had a magical pancake machine. With a single press of a button, you could receive two pancakes within minutes. (When you press the button, pancake batter is squirted onto a conveyor belt and the pancakes cook as they travel down the belt before being deposited onto a plate.) 3) The airport had steamboat models, a plane, and animal skeletons from the Cincinnati Museum Complex, which includes history, children’s, and natural history and science museums.

Clockwise from top left: modern art, teapots, pancake machine, mastodon skeleton at the airport