San Diego...Zoo

Yesterday, Thursday, was spent all day in anxious anticipation of our flight to San Diego.  I had trouble at work, sitting quietly in meetings and at my desk.  On the inside, I was bouncing off the walls, nervous for the plane ride with the Princess and for just being there in San Diego with no way to turn back.  If I were in a cartoon show, I would have been running around in circles, babbling on a mile a minute about nothing. 

The flight with the Princess was rather uneventful with the Princess shyly looking at all the strangers and only giving an occasional complaint.  The trick was to keep her well-fed with the leftover yams that I brought and to give her my absolute undivided attention as if she were an actual princess.  We met my husband at the airport where we picked up at rental car and drove to our friends with whom we were staying. 

My husband had this brilliant idea to spend today, Friday, at the San Diego Zoo, located in Balboa Park.  I generally try to avoid places that are overcrowded with schoolkids and overpriced fatty foods.  Zoos, theme parks, water parks all tend to fit the bill.  Plus, I am not particularly found of things, such as wild animals and roller coaster rides.  I would much rather have downtime around the house and read or watch movies.  To amuse my husband and to be able to tell the Princess when she is older what great parents we were to bring her to the zoo, I agreed to go.

The trip to the zoo started off with a trip to a nearby grocery store called Fresh and Easy Neighborhood Market in order to pick up food for lunch.  We got to the zoo about a half an hour after it had opened and already, there were hoards of schoolkids streaming in.  We went straight to the pandas because according to our friends, the San Diego zoo is well known for its pandas.  We looked and the pandas were rather uninteresting, looking back at us with a bored look.  In fact, that seemed to be a universal theme amongst the zoo animals.  On paper, it sounds cool to be visiting pandas, tigers, lions, elephants, tapirs, warthogs, polar bears, bearcats, etc.  For the most part, however, the animals were hiding, sleeping, or sunbathing.  Not much excitement.  As my husband quipped when we went to see the polar bear who happened to be stagnant, laying on a rock in the sunshine, "After all, this is a polar bear in the middle of San Diego.  What do you expect it to be doing?"

After wandering around the zoo for an hour, we sat down to eat and quickly finished almost everything we had bought.  With only eight hours of sleep last night instead of her typical ten hours of beauty rest, the Princess was getting cranky and loopy.  We quickly put her back in the stroller and went around the rest of the zoo, barely stopping to see the animals.  An hour later, we could officially claim to have "seen" everything at the zoo and could leave without feeling guilty about wasting money on zoo tickets.

The Princess is over the zoo

We ended our trip to the zoo with another trip to the grocery store; this time it was to an Albertson's.  It is not that we have never been to a grocery store before because clearly we have.  We actually love going grocery shopping.  I think it is the best part of our trip today to the San Diego zoo!