The Zoo

During the off-season, many London attractions offer 2-for-1 vouchers and today we used one such voucher for the London Zoo, which was crowded, but not as crowded as it'll probably be over the long weekend! We saw African hunting dogs, sleeping warthogs,
and a very cute okapi--sort of half zebra, half giraffe, and one of our favourites of the day.
Bob tried to call the giraffes over by whispering "Jerome . . ." but somehow that didn't work.
One giraffe did wander over, not in response to Bob, but to chat with a zebra neighbour.
Next up were the tapirs--they're so great. Best noses ever!
Red river hogs
and an assortment of wee monkeys made appearances.

The otters reminded us of walks around Lost Lagoon back in Vancouver--they were very difficult to catch in a photograph as they never stayed still for very long!
The toucans were very impressive,
as were the kookaburras.
The owls were sleeping
and although the new £5,300,000 gorilla enclosure opened last week, during our visit the gorillas seemed to prefer the indoors. This female sat on the walkway, gazing down at the crowds,

while this male was a bit more aloof.
The bearded pigs wore their beards above their mouths

and the penguins couldn't open their mouths quickly enough at feeding time. We walked through the butterfly habitat, where signs told us not to touch the butterflies, even though they kept trying to land on us. Before we left the exhibit, we were instructed to check for "hitchhikers" in the provided mirror (Bob said this was his favourite part of the day). The adjacent pupae display was a bit creepy, but also amazing.
We were able to get closer to the pelicans than we did at St. James's Park, and enjoyed their pink sheen as well as the flamingos'. By now it was almost closing time, and keepers were leading animals inside for the night.This little fish-worm (the very scientific name that I gave him) charmed me today with his cute face,
as did this bear, many years ago, through A.A. Milne's tales. In fact, I still have a soft spot for the (non-Disney) Winnie, and a visit to Winnie-the-Pooh country, just south of London, is on my list of places to go. Tired after our afternoon of walking around the zoo, we decided to take a leisurely path to our train: a fifteen-minute canal-boat ride! This duck and her very large brood swam beside us for a while

and we puttered slowly down the canal

until we got to Camden,
where our boat docked.
As we walked toward the rail station, I saw some flats that struck me as very very odd, took a photo, and made a mental note to check for more info in a book I got from the library when we got home. Sure enough, the complex gets an entry in Ken Allinson's London's Contemporary Architecture. Under the heading "Sainsbury's battleship supermarket" (the Sainsbury's is on the other side), Allinson describes the building as "a cranky and now ageing development." To me, it looks like housing on a futuristic film set--in any case, not very homey!