Winter revellers have started pouring out on the weekends, flocking to parks and museums.
Places like the Victoria Memorial, Alipore zoo and Nicco Park were crowded throughout Sunday.
Around 12.30pm, traffic was crawling on the Salt Lake bypass near Nicco Park, mainly because of the number of vehicles headed to the amusement park.
Around 2pm, a snaking queue of around 100 people was spotted at the gate of the Victoria Memorial. Many more were on their way to the lawns of the marble monument.
The entire area around the Victoria Memorial, Nandan, Rabindra Sadan and St Paul’s Cathedral had people streaming in all day.
The crowd at the Victoria Memorial peaked around noon with many walking in post-lunch and staying on till 5pm, the closing time.
The demand for horse carriages on the road was also high.
The Victoria had around 15,000 visitors on Sunday, said an official. The Alipore zoo, too, was the destination of thousands of people. Long queues outside the ticket counters were spotted even late in the afternoon.
Hawkers outside the premises did brisk business.
Inside, one had to wait for quiet some time to have a glimpse of the tiger. There were sizeable crowds around the giraffe and kangaroo enclosures, too.
“We had over 22,000 visitors on Sunday. A month ago, the number had been between 5,000 and 8,000,’’ said an official of the zoo.
The weather played its part. The morning had a hint of chill and the day was bright and sunny. The minimum temperature was 16.5 degrees.
The next few days are likely to see the minimum temperature hover between 16 and 18 degrees Celsius, said a Met official.
“The northwesterly winds are flowing in. If their intensity dips a little, the mercury will go up. If the intensity of the winds goes up, the mercury will slide,’’ the official said.
Kajol Mukherjee, who lives in Garia on the city’s southern fringes, had come to the zoo with his wife and their four-year-old daughter.
“This is my daughter’s first visit to the zoo. She loves seeing animals in books and on TV,’’ said Mukherjee, who works for an insurance company.
The Maidan was also the destination of many. Visitors were seen eating lunch from tiffin boxes and plates. Many people, young and old, played badminton and cricket on the greens.
Hawkers selling everything from chocolates to balloons dotted the Maidan.
Nicco Park in Salt Lake and Eco Park in New Town, too, were crowded.
Traffic slowed on the Salt Lake bypass, which leads to Nicco Park from EM Bypass, as well as on the Major Arterial Road, near Eco Park, as hundreds of vehicles headed to the two fun hotspots.
More than 10,000 people visited Eco Park on Sunday and around 1,500 visited Nicco Park, officials of the two parks said.
Restaurants across the city were busy, too, throughout the day.
