Wandergliding: London's Battersea Zoo

Shirley stayed overnight at Sid and Sonia’s flat while the Glenns (Sarah, Brad & Brenna) stayed in a nearby hotel. We picked them up in the morning and Shirley drove us to the Hogsback Brewery where Brad and I picked up some of the T.E.A. beer (nothing like a beer run first thing!). Shirley had to press on, pick up Gemma’s wedding dress and then drive back home to Weymouth (about a 2 ½ hour drive back south). The Glenns and I went for lunch, wandered around a bit and then they went back to their hotel for afternoon naps (Brenna is only 2, so the jet lag and time difference was going to take some time to get over). They came back for dinner that evening and I was the chef again, this time my specialty, stir fry.

The next day I planned to day trip in to London with the Glenns. They were heading to Paris the next day for a brief 3 day trip before they would head down to Weymouth. We had a bit of a late start as they didn’t have a very good night’s sleep and then we happened to miss a train by all of one minute, if that...but they come every half hour so no biggie. I love traveling by train and this was Brenna’s first train ride and she seemed to enjoy it as well. There was a young couple sitting nearby and the guy was wearing a goofy lion hat. When Brenna saw it, she couldn’t help making her version of "what sound a baby jaguar makes": “Rrr-ow, rrr-ow!”...super cute. Once we arrived to Waterloo station (of course the ABBA song popped into my head), we jumped on the tube and worked our way to their hotel at Paddington. Brenna sure enjoyed the myriad of escalators, so much that she’d throw a little fit when we would get off of each one. The hotel room was a nice, but typical for London, super small. We then hopped back on the tube to make our way to Battersea park and zoo. Bren slept in the stroller as we walked about a kilometer from the Sloane Square tube station, across Chelsea bridge to the park. Ah, Chelsea, home of one of the better Premier League football clubs.

The zoo is home to a variety of animals ranging from lemurs to donkeys, parakeets to monkeys. One of the more interesting exhibits was the meerkats pen. There were a couple of parallel tunnels running about 10 feet down a slight decline. Sarah and I convinced Brenna to follow us down and once at the end, we could sit up a little bit and peer out a fibreglass dome in the middle of the enclosure. There was a meerkat furiously digging away not 6 inches from my head...nice! I also got a kick out of the talking mina bird saying “Allo” in a proper British accent. Great little zoo at a good price.

After the zoo we walked around a bit in the park but avoided the carousel section as we figured Brenna had had enough excitement for one afternoon. We contemplated heading to the Churchill museum but figured we didn’t have quite enough time. We also pondered the nearby military museum but after walking a few blocks our tired legs steered us towards locating a pub for dinner...or sorry, tea. The area around Sloane Square is teeming with fancy shops, but not good little pubs so we hopped on the tube and headed to Picadilly Circus. After a nice pub dinner, we headed our separate ways on the tube with the Glenns heading back to their hotel and I trained back to Aldershot. I do like London day trips.

Escalator excitement: