A Trip To The Zoo

Me and the girlfriend both had the day off on Friday, so seeing as the weather was nice, and even though I'm still recovering from a stupid virus, both decided that a leisurely trip to the London Zoo would be in order.

Neither of us had been there since we were wee nippers, so we decided to make like tourists and met up in Baker Street, bought sandwiches, sat in Regents Park watching the ducks waddle by and then, with our bellies full, waddled off ourselves to the zoo to walk it all off.

I'd done a quick search on the internet beforehand to check out prices (adults 14.50 or 16.00 with a donation to their Gorilla Action programme) and had even managed to find a 2 for 1 offer so long as you had a valid train ticket. Result! I bought a travelcard and we saved a tenner on entry.

As a backup, I had known that the ZSL website advertises that if you buy your ticket on the internet, you can save 10% and go in a fast track queue.

As I said, both of us hadn't been there for over 20 years, possible even 25. The last time that I went to London zoo, I remember crossing the road with my mum and seeing Mike Reid in the car that had stopped to let us by. I paused in the road and tried to explain to my mum who he was. "The man from 'Runaround', mum." He laughed jovially at me and my mum dragged me away and off to the main attraction of the day, the zoo.

We had deliberately planned to go when we knew that there were no school holidays, and definitely not on a weekend and boy did that pay off, big time!

No queues whatsoever and a very quiet zoo overall. The fast track queue was redundant. Definitely no having to fight our way through school kids or anything like that. It was really pleasant for us to be able to stroll hand in hand (yes, we still do that) around the zoo, taking our time and enjoying everything.

A strange youthful excitement filled us as we walked around. We were so happy together and both felt younger too, like we had when we were last here.

It made sense to follow a green route painted around the zoo which is suggested as the best way of seeing the whole zoo. So we worked our way around and saw giraffes, zebras, flying birds of every colour and sound, penguins, butterflies (landing on us as we walk through through their are), anteaters, snakes, fish, iguanas, camels (well out of spitting distance! ), bugs of every sort, cute blind vole type things (the name of which I can't remember but they shovel sand backwards down see-through pipes all day long, hippos, monkeys galore, tigers, lions and last but most certainly not least, the three lovely gorillas in the new "Gorilla Kingdom." That you get to stand less than a foot away from, should they decide to come up to you (and they did.)

It was brilliant!

We left just as the zoo was closing and heading up Primrose Hill to chill out for a bit, as the other half had never been up there, and I didn't think that we were knackered enough!

We ended the day making up for all the lost calories by stuffing our faces in TGI Fridays in Piccadilly.

I was feeling rather hot by now as my virus temperature thing had returned but had had a really good day regardless. Beats sitting in the office any day!