First, a general comment: Since this forms part of the City of Arts and Sciences, you can assume that every building has architectural appeal, that the signing in Valenciano, Spanish, and English is excellent, and that you are never far from a modern, clean toilet. There are two restaurants and several places to buy snacks, as well as the normal souvenir stalls.

Now, to the point. They claim to have 45,000 creatures of 500 different species in the Oceanográfico and, give or take, the odd one--I don’t doubt it. The outside area is pretty phenomenal in itself, with numerous islands and masses of lovely rock, which is home to pelicans, spoonbills, flamingos, scarlet ibises, black-winged stilts, turtles, and other creatures.

The entrance building represents a whale’s head and tail and gives access to the islands outside or to the Mediterranean pavilion. This alone has seven large aquaria with something like 7,400 creatures. The Arctic Pavilion has two huge aquaria for Beluga whales and walruses. The Antarctic Pavilion, called Ocean on the website, has a large aquarium where Humboldt’s penguins can be seen swimming at terrific speeds. The pavilion called Oceans is actually the Oceanos one, where you walk through a long underground tunnel with fish, some large and fierce-looking, swimming on both sides of you and above you. The Temperate and Tropical Pavilion is very impressive, with big turtles and giant spider crabs being prominent, along with a sort of underwater kelp forest. Two particular areas must surely deserve major praise. First comes the Wetlands, where there are two different temperature zones within the pavilion and a spectacular array of birds. Then comes the Delfinário [Dolphinarium], with five pools and 26 million litres of water, the largest in Europe, and big even by world standards. I thought I knew what a dolphin show was, but I had never seen anything like this one, three times a day with a huge seating area, about half being in shade. At least twelve bottlenosed dolphins and half a dozen wet-suited humans put on a real spectacle, and the adults, including this one, were roaring applause as loudly as the children and not merely encouraging the creatures [who do love the attention] but paying a well-merited tribute. Lastly, the Red Sea Auditorium will take 400 at a time and shows frequent films on a large screen.