A cool day, and I did something I am glad that I did, and that of course is to go to the London Zoo. Now mind you, this zoo is the oldest in the world, set up by the Duke of Wellington after he expelled all the animals that lived on his estate, believe it or not the Tower of London, I hear. So anyway, yeah, the oldest in the world at Regents Park. So to begin I woke up a bit later than I would have liked and after seeing everyone else off, I decided I wanted to go and see this attraction and took the Hammersmith and City to Baker Street, which is probably the most fun street to get out of the Tube at, besides Westminster station. After that, I walked up to Regent’s Park, and walked through there taking notice of all the pretty flowers, even in Winter and everything. After walking for a while through here, I came upon the Zoo, which I had actually been near before, but today decided to go inside. I did so at the low low student cost of £12.00, plus I bought a guidebook of it for an additional £3 something. Well I figured it would be worth it to do once. Now I can recall having been told once that Winter was the best time to go to a zoo, and besides the fact that it was cold and some of the normal attractions were closed for repairs, I think that statement is fairly sound. For one thing there were not many people there at all, and those who were almost all of them foreign. The other great reason to go during this time is the animals are definitely out more, so as to keep warm I figure. I took many pictures of many animals and it was great.
Of course the strangest part to me was seeing the domestic or farm animals on display, and it was great, there was this one point where the chickens escaped their pen. They were running wild for sweet sweet freedom. It was really quite amusing, but I must confess to see cows and chickens in central London like this was something unusual to me. I saw almost all exhibits and it was a good zoo, but I don’t think worth the entry fee it cost to go in, save for once perhaps, as it was the oldest. The other cool thing about this was that there was a tribute to Winnie the Pooh, as the inspirational bear for him lived in this zoo for several years back in the teens and twenties. The bear that inspired Winnie the Pooh was from Canada, and an army officer of some Royal Canadian Force brought him over from Winnipeg, Canada (I always thought there was a connection), and he called him Winnie because that is whence he came. Anyway, the guy brought him to the zoo and in 1926 or so it inspired the authoress to write a book about him. One thing I might mention about this day was that my package from my parents finally arrived and I was so relieved and excited to find some great things in there, ah my parents love me so much! Well, after the zoo, I went home and worked on a few things but basically didn’t do too much. I let Erika burn a good deal of my music, but I think there was just too much, and the computer was being less than cooperative. Before that, I finished Zulu, which was very inspiring, especially with the song “Men of Harlech” at the end. After a long time of this, Erika burning my music that is, I eventually drifted off to sleep, nervous about the next day.