France Family Breaks: Nausicaa, Boulogne

by Dea Birkett

My kids love a little bit of fish. Not only to eat, but to see in aquariums. Our most recent sighting was at Nausicaa in Boulogne in the Pas-de-Calais département of northern France, where we thought we’d see shoals of cod and a few small crabs, much as you might meet on a French bistro menu. But Nausicaa has been transformed into a Pacific island paradise, displaying exotic species from endangered small islands. It’s like taking a trip to the Seychelles just by boarding a ferry to Calais. There were leafy sea dragons, a huge tank of swishing sealions, towers of jellyfish and turbot we could touch. The two giant tortoises looked as if they hadn’t shifted from their sandy spot for several decades. But beware – not everything there is as authentic as an Attenborough documentary. The 10-year-old twins spotted that the crocodile bathing in the swamp and the heron standing on the mangrove root were both made of plastic.

While Nausicaa is keen on spreading the eco message, the French don’t appear to be at all squeamish at associating real animals with real food. Nausicaa’s giftshop is stocked with cookbook titles such as Cuisiner la Mer or ‘53 Ways to Steam Mussels. You can also purchase tins of pilchards and jars of soupe de poisson.

I think it’s rare to also have the exhibits on sale to eat. I state that with confidence, as my family considers itself an amateur authority on aquariums, having visited a large number. Among our very favourite is the Sea Life London Aquarium with its newly acquired penguins, which makes us feel if we’re straying into ‘Happy Feet 2’, and the small aquarium at south London’s Horniman Museum. The latter is particularly charming as it doesn’t attempt to out-shock or out-shark – it concentrates on pond life, a term usually reserved for something that’s very, very boring. But the Horniman’s aquarium, all at child height, has frogs and anemones that are just as fascinating as parrotfish. It’s like pond-dipping without getting wet. And don’t forget to visit the musem’s tatty old stuffed walrus, who even has his own Twitter account. But don’t go to the giftshop afterwards expecting Roald Dahl style stewed walrus recipes. You can’t even buy a stuffed copy of him.

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