Barcelona Zoo

Barcelona's zoo, founded in 1892, occupies much of one end of the Parc de la Ciutadella in a pretty garden setting. At the entrance, the sculpture of a leaping deer is not a foretaste of some of the zoo’s inmates but a tribute to Walt Disney from the 1960s. The zoo is so large that you may want to avail yourself of the zoo train or hire an electric buggy.

You'll find all the zoo regulars, but in spite of postcards still sold all over town, you won't find Snowflake, a rare albino gorilla with showbiz flare who arrived as a baby not long before Franco died and was regarded by the more facetious Surrealists as a portent: Snowflake was a fallen angel come to announce doom to the smug. He died in 2003, but lives on—in white chocolate. Several of his children and grandchildren are in the zoo, but none are albino.