Butterflies, beauty and creepy crawlies

If you visited Niagara in recent years, there is a pretty good chance that you made your way to the Butterfly Conservatory. The gorgeous little piece of tropical paradise set within the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens and School or Horticulture. It is a place that our family loved and visited often. We had the opportunity to visit the Penang equivalent this past month, the Entopia Butterfly Farm. Entopia is an actual farm that raises butterflies that are exported around the world. As you can see in this photo, the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory is one of the locations where they export butterflies to.

Like our Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara, Entopia has created a beautiful, indooor tropical micro-climate complete with waterfalls and thousands of lush plantings for the butterflies to live in. 

Entopia goes well beyond just butterflies though, and includes displays on fish, birds, reptiles and insects as well. We even got to see the familiar snapping turtle during our visit.

While the tropical butterfly (and other creature) space was beautiful and amazing, what really impressed me about Entopia was the indoor learning spaces.

Everyone engaged in learning more about butterflies and insects through a variety of activities.

There was even a bug town in Entopia.

And yes… foosball… on the back of a giant beetle…

And of course… a mayor.

Overall, we enjoyed our learning excursion to Entopia and were impressed with the care and attention that had been put into the facilities and the interactive learning experiences. Artie looked at me at one point while we were there and said “I could stay here for days!”