Sunday, November 9, 2008

Friday 10th October - San Diego Zoo

Today was to be our day at the Zoo. When I had booked our Disneyland visit, I had chosen to get the Southern California City Pass, which included our 3 day park-hoppers for Disney, one day at Sea World, one day at either San Diego Zoo OR the Wild Animal Park, and a day at Universal Studios back in Hollywood.  I had heard fabulous things about the Zoo so that's what we chose.

As usual, we began our day with the free breakfast, and got our bags packed up, after the Zoo we would be heading back up to Anaheim for a special treat for the kids.  We checked out of our hotel and were at the Zoo not long after opening.





First things first we rented a stroller for Kenzie, there was no way she would walk the entire zoo, and I knew from my research that it was a lot of hills.  She was very happy with that idea I can tell you.


Hmmm, he looks familiar.


We decided to do the bus tour first, that way we could see the whole zoo and decide which areas and animals to go and visit.  It was a double decker bus and we sat up on the top level.  The tour was great, we went up and down lots of very steep and narrow roads, so it gave us an idea of what we would have in store for us.

Once we got off the bus, we collected our strollers and consulted our map so we could decide what to see first.  We also realised Kingston only had one shoe on.  The other must have fallen off the bus, I was so disappointed, they were new, and super cute.

Hunter was keen to check out the snakes, and there were lots to see. At this point we decided to separate, Kenzie wanted to ride the cable cars, so her and Craig went off to do that and I took the boys, intending to see the Giant Panda.

We saw this guy, he was pretty cool.  It seemed to take us a long time on lots of winding walkways to get down to the level where the Pandas are, we did get to see lots of other animals along the way, and it's a beautiful Zoo.



Finally we saw the Pandas, that area was crowded, I think they are one of the star attractions.



We kept heading down once we'd seen the Pandas, yes, it's all downhill which is great, UNTIL, you want to go back up!  It's a good workout for sure, luckily it wasn't as stinking hot as some of the other days we'd had.

Hunter wanted to see the Polar bears, which meant once we got to the bottom of the hill, we turned a corner and went back up the other side!  There was a big crowd at the bears too.



Two of them kept wrestling each other, it was pretty cool to watch.





We spent quite a while watching them, before we decided to go and find Craig and Kenzie.  Look what I saw in one of the caves.  I'm not sure which species of bear this is, but he looked like a good Hunter.



Okay bad jokes aside, we ran into Craig and Kenzie as we were walking back up the hill, and they wanted to see the Polar Bears, so we went back with them, yes that's right, down the hill round the corner and up another hill again! Once they had seen the bears we decided to head back up the top and grab some lunch before we left, we got to see the hippos and lots of the other animals on our way back up.  Of course Kingston was asleep by now, but I was so glad I wasn't pushing Kenzie, she's heavy!!  

And just a quick side note, they had not gone on the cable cars at all, Kenzie had freaked when they got to the front of the line, but they had walked up and down the hill where the bus had gone and found Kingston's missing shoe! 

My heroes!!

We had a quick lunch, a little look at the children's Zoo and were in the car again around one.  We had told the kids if they were on their best behaviour  that we would take them to a Halloween party that night, and they could wear their costumes.  

That was enough to keep them behaving, and excited all day.

I'm sure you're wondering where we were going too?

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