A Day at the Zoo

Laura's birthday is on Monday. But, as it's the weekend, we thought it'd be nice to do something to celebrate it a couple of days early. I'd booked a table for dinner at a French restaurant in town, Cafe Saint-Honore, later in the evening, and as Laura had never been to Edinburgh Zoo before and wanted to see the penguins, we went there for the afternoon.

It'd been a while since I've been to the Zoo myself. I'm not sure where I stand on the whole zoo thing. Yes, I hate the whole caged animal thing, and some of the animals we saw clearly looked bored / pissed off, especially the big cats who were pacing back and forth in a pretty disturbing and sad kind of way. But there's also the whole ' zoological society' / educational aspect, where they're helping to preserve / maintain endangered species in some cases. Good and worthwhile work I'm sure. But it's fair to say that in today's society the idea of keeping animals locked up in a cage for human entertainment is questionable.

Nevertheless, we had a nice day. It was bad timing in a way as it's the winter season, so the park was a little quiet, and some areas were closed, partly due also to building work going on; there's a new Chimpanzee House under construction at the moment - looks great. Also, there was only one restaurant open, so our choices for lunch were limited. I use the term 'restaurant' loosely. It was more like a high school cafeteria. By the time we got there (we wanted to see the penguin parade at 2:15 so it was a late lunch) most of the hot food was gone and we had to settle for a couple of scones and a packet of crisps. A third of the eating space was also taken over by a kids jungle gym (which parents had to pay to use!) so it was a little noisy and chaotic. A sign of things to come perhaps! I joked with Laura that it felt more like being in a zoo than it did out in the park.

Anyway, that was the low point. The high point was probably the penguins. They were very entertaining. They had a little penguin parade, which involved two penguins being chaperoned around a circuit of pavement just outside their compound, led under close supervision by a couple of zoo keepers. Very cute, but not quite what I'd call a parade. But funny nevertheless. Afterwards we checked out the main penguin house. It's pretty nice, has a big pool and everything! They were pretty photogenic too. One in particular with funky yellow hair. There was also a bit where you could check them out swimming underwater through thick glass. Pretty cool.

There were plenty of monkeys. Dom would have liked it. I'm sure we'll go back again when the wee one's out and about. It's a good day out. I've posted some other photos on my flickr site if you want to have a look.