We woke up early, got ready, and enjoyed breakfast at the restaurant at our hotel before setting off for the zoo. We found it pretty easily – I don’t think we even took one wrong turn! The zoo has a great bus tour for an overview of the zoo and then express bus stops to expedite visitors through the 100 acres of zoo land. We began with the express bus and then made our plan for the day.
We began by taking the sky ride to the other end of the zoo. While in line, an Indian woman struck up a conversation with us and she ended up riding with us. I felt pretty bad for her because it was a hot day and she had on lots of layers. I think she decided to take the ride back and forth to cool off! It was interesting talking to her and I became a sort of tour guide as she asked for suggestions of places to go. I hadn't realized that I had visited so many attractions in California! Unfortunately I didn’t think to ask her if she’d mind taking a picture of the two of us.
We heard that visitors could feed the giraffe from 12-1:00 so around 11:30 we hopped on the express bus stop #2. We hadn’t finished with the area we were at but figured we’d feed the giraffe and then head back to our original area. We made it the giraffe stop but the line was VERY long and we ended up just going back to where we started! It was nice to sit though so it all worked out.
Finally we headed over to visit the pandas. My mom hadn’t seen pandas (ever) so I was pretty excited. The father and mother were out but the baby wasn’t being as cooperative. Apparently the zoo keepers use positive reinforcement by allowing a window of time for the pandas to go to the exhibit. If they go out to the exhibit they are given extra treats. If they decide to not go to the exhibit they are not punished but are returned to the indoor area and are not “eligible” to earn treats for going outside for a set amount of time. The trainers then try again later. We waited for a few minutes but since the baby had not been cooperative, the window of opportunity was shut and we were told that the baby would be off-exhibit for awhile so we headed over to the elephant area. I love the elephants! I’m amazed by their trunks, playfulness and huge ears (possibly because I’ve been told my ears are huge and look like elephant ears). We visited the elephants, lions, condors, kangaroos, and then finally headed back to see if baby panda was out. The line was fairly long but soooo worth the wait. The father was making himself comfortable when we arrived (see below).
The mother and baby were both out and were chomping down on some bamboo. I don’t know what it is about these animals that just amazes me – maybe it’s their mickey-mouse-like ears, the way they use their paws, or their playfulness. Either way, they are the cutest things ever, even the adults. The baby was showing off and I got a few pretty good pics. Here are a couple of my favorites.
We visited the meerkats in the afternoon and had fun watching their pop their little heads out of the many holes in their enclosure. I began having whack-a-mole flashbacks. There's one meerkat who acts as a lookout. The others watch him and if he (or she) senses danger, the others are alerted and quickly scurry into their holes. While we were watching them a plane few overhead. The meerkat on lookout duty alerted the rest of the cute little meerkats of the huge danger that was lurking. So heroic! It was super cute to watch and I got a great picture of the lookout as he monitored the plane.
Our feet were exhausted around 4 so we decided to call it a day. We were on the Monkey Trail which ran into the Hippo and some other trail and couldn’t find out way out, even with the map! Luckily an employee walked by and pointed us (and another couple) in the right direction. I mention the other couple so you understand that it wasn’t just us having issues!
We went back to the room and cleaned up. The plan was to head to Ocean beach so we could say we saw the beach and then to find a little café around there to eat. Mr. C and I have been to many beaches around L.A. so I figured the San Diego beaches would be the same. I guess I should have done more research because the beach was not what I had expected. It was dirty, full of smelly kids smoking while skateboarding (yes, I do understand that this statement makes me sound old). Perhaps we went to the wrong part of the beach but neither one of us were too impressed. We hung out for about five minutes and then quickly walked to the car in search of a better area. I drove for probably about 15 minutes, having no clue where I was going. We tried using the GPS system to find a mall or theatre since we assumed there would be restaurants around there. Eventually I came up with the brilliant plan to search for an Olive Garden because wherever an Olive Garden is, there will be more places. We found one but didn’t like any of the surrounding restaurants to decided to head back to our hotel. We entered the info in and found out that the hotel was less than 2 minutes away. After laughing about our amazing navigational skills, we drove to the hotel, parked the car, and walked across the street to a great Mexican restaurant for dinner. The evening would have gone much smoother if we had simply done this in the beginning but it made for an unpredictable evening.
The next morning we headed to the Desert Hills Premium Outlets and did a little shopping. I even picked up a few Christmas gifts! The trip was great and although I love my dad and Mr. C, it was wonderful spending some one-on-one time with my mom.
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