Zoo Zürich

This guide to Zoo Zurich centers on Kaeng Krachan, the elephant park named for a Thai national park, and the choice its keepers built into it: five mornings a week, a gate opens onto a swim the elephants can take or ignore entirely. You'll hear how the fifty-seven-million-franc enclosure was funded almost entirely by donors, and why one of its six water basins was designed to let visitors watch from underwater rather than from the bank. It also covers the curved wooden dome overhead, pierced by skylights meant to erase any sense of being indoors. Head to the underwater glass first, before the morning crowds settle in.