England 9: Friday in London- a visit to the Zooniverse ("Where all your dreams come true....niverse") in The England Chronicles - June 2013

By Friday we couldn't believe that the London Leg was almost over...just like last time, it went by in a flash. And just like last time we felt like we did about an eighth of a percent of what we wanted to do. But we thoroughly enjoyed what we did manage, so no complaints.

Friday we went to the London Zoo. We intended to walk along the canal at Regents Park and go to the Camden Lock market, and roam around Camden itself... but, what a surprise... we ran out of time. We were at the zoo for ages. And it was absolutely pouring rain when we left the zoo-- we got seriously drenched walking back to the tube, even with raingear- so it wasn't good market weather. That was really the only day we had much rain. It was overcast pretty often, and sprinkled now and then, but that was the only serious rain. So we couldn't complain. We also spent so long at the zoo that the Camden Lock Market would have been closed before we could get there. Next time.

I really enjoyed the zoo. It was something on Kim's To Do list -- she wanted to either see the zoo or the Wetlands Center -- or maybe a bird center? I've forgotten now; I think there was a bird preserve somewhere nearby too that she was interested in. Kim loves birds. I think we decided on the zoo because it was near the Camden market, but it was a good choice. The animals seemed very well cared-for, and they had tons of outreach and educational programs, so even though I'm sorry for animals being caged, at the same time the zoo is doing a huge amount of work towards preservation.

Naturally I had The Mighty Boosh in my head the entire time, especially Bob Fossil. And I kept referring to it as The Zooniverse. Sadly Kim has not seen The Mighty Boosh so didn't find that nearly as amusing as I did.

"Nicey nicey zoo zoo for him and her and me and you!"

And Bollo, of course.

Kim also didn't find as amusing as I did when I kept saying that in Bollo's voice while watching the gorillas.

Anyhow. The walk to the zoo by the canal at Regents Park was very pleasant.

We went through the aquarium first. It was impressive. I didn't get that many good pictures, though. It was quite dark, so I ended up with lots of colorful blur.

An extremely shaggy camel:

Lots of monkeys, of course:

The gorilla was wearing what looked like a burlap sack:

There were zillions of birds, which made Kim happy:

And huge tortoises:

They had tigers, too:

One of the tigers was lying up against the viewing area:

And then he rolled over.....

Do you not want to just tickle his cute little feeties?!?! That may be why they have signs like this:

Of course there were lions too. There are two in the picture below, but it's a little hard to see the second one at first- she's sleeping with her head up against the one you can see. Awwwww!

This one was apparently causing trouble. She was playing with that stick and whacking it around until the awake lion in the picture above came down to make her cut it out.

The last thing we saw was....

Capuchin monkeys!! They were actually running free in this area. The guards made everyone put up their food and drinks before going in -- they will come up and grab things away from you. They were REALLY cute. And were dashing about crazily all over the place.

SO, after a full day at the zooniverse, we walked back to Camden in the pouring rain, and stopped at the Spread Eagle Pub for dinner. It was very good - I had Guinness and a steak and ale pie. I will note, though, that steak pie in England seems to be made of what we call stew beef here. I had one on the last trip too, and was a little shocked to find it was really just stew. Which I am not a fan of. I tried it again because I was starved and it sounded good -- and the broth and veggies were excellent; I just wasn't so crazy about the meat.

The pub was packed, and oddly we ended up sitting with a huge group of people having a party of some sort. The pub mostly had long tables, and we sat at the very end of one, not realizing that the people at the other end were waiting on even more people--- and then we felt terrible for taking up part of their table, although they had so many people there before we left that our two seats wouldn't have made much difference. They were very nice- we apologized several times for sitting there, and would have moved if there was anywhere else to move to (and ate as fast as we could) and I kept getting up to let people slide in - so it was actually quite entertaining.

After that we went back down to Kensington to the Victoria and Albert Museum. They are open late on Fridays so it seemed like a good time to go. Sadly, though, we didn't stay all that long. Kim was seriously about to collapse, although she wouldn't admit it -- and what I really wanted to see what the David Bowie exhibit, which turned out to have a fee- I think it translated into about $25. Too much when it was late and we were tired. So we wandered around the fashion exhibit a little bit and finally gave up and went back to Stratford and our Wetherspoons.

Meanwhile Baker B had a pleasant and non-eventful day in Devizes. Well, this was the Solstice, so he got up at three in the morning and went with his landlord to Stonehenge and got to hang out with 20,000 druids and hippies -- so that was pretty eventful, but in a good way.

Wow -- it's no wonder I take forever doing these. You get a gold star from David Bowie if you've managed to read this far!