We went to the zoo yesterday. It was very cold.
There weren't many places open New Year's Day in Paris. All of the museums were closed. The grocery stores and bakeries were closed. The restaurants around the hotel were closed - with one exception (more on that later). So the zoo was about the only game in town.
It wasn't a bad little zoo. They had yaks, tigers, monkeys, camels, crocodiles, snakes, birds ... and what looked like a hippo house (see picture above). The french guy was pretty excited when he saw it. By that time we had been walking around in the cold for a couple of hours and he was clearly reaching his limit (with the camera on his iPhone, with the cold, and probably with me for dragging him out into the cold). But the promise of some hippos seemed to revive him.
We made our way around to the entrance of the building only to find that the hippo house had no hippos. Apparently it's not a hippo house. It's just a big, round, building with some statues of hippos out back. The french guy circled the interior twice with a look of disbelief that soon turned to disgust. After consulting the zoo map he ushered me in the direction of the raccoons.
6 comments:
When you are in Paris, it's cold outside and nothing is open, it's probably best to just stay in the hotel room (wink, wink).
Bars, restaurants, too. I would simply eat all day long. (Pause.) And right there is a very telling difference between my husband and me.
I think it's funny that they have raccoons in Paris zoos. Are those considered exotic over there? I can just look out my window on garbage night in the summer to see raccoons.
:P
You should have asked him if he wanted to go to a strip club, they never close. You could have told him some of your war stories.
I thought the raccoons were funny, too. I thought, "Gee, do they have those at Brookfield, and I just never go in that building?" I remember hearing monkeys when I lived near that zoo in the south. Lots of monkeys. Unless those were just the other Americans.
We got kicked out of the hotel room by housekeeping. They must get paid based on the number of rooms they clean because she was very insistant that we leave.
I would have been quite content to sit in a bar or restaurant if there were any open. I think we would have had more options if the hotel were in a tourist neighborhood.
I tried explaining to the french guy why I thought it was funny that they had raccoons in a zoo, that I can see them anytime outside my house. I don't think he believed me. I was getting the "you are full of sh*t" look.
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