[Back In Time] London Vacation - Day 4: ZSL London ZOO (2 STEEM giveaway inside)

On Sunday we wanted to take a rest a bit, so to spend a day in a London Zoo sounded like a good plan. I have never been to any zoo abroad, so I was just curious. Will the London's one be able to compete with ours - Prague's one?

When you look at Wikipedia, you will learn that the ZSL London Zoo was the first scientific zoo in the world to open in 1828. However, ordinary mortals had to wait until 1847 when it started to be available to the public. At the same time, it was the first to open the reptile pavilion, the aquarium, the insect pavilion and zoo for kids. That's quite a lot of firsts, don't you think?

The zoo is relatively small, and you can't find, e.g., elephants in it. They were moved to another branch of the ZSL. If you are trying to find out what this abbreviation means, it is the Zoological Society of London, founded in 1826, which deals with protection of nature.

We walk to the Zoo from Camden Town Metro Station. First, we got into a special street full of different shops that had different 3D objects on the walls. E.g. shoe or elephant.

We wanted to have a snack somewhere, and we wanted to go to McDonald's which had to be nearby. We were going according to a map. But we didn't see it. Suddenly we see a poster saying we've missed a McDonald's. Are they kidding us? Instead of telling us how many meters we encounter, they'll tell us that we've already missed it. McDonald's wasn't anywhere. They probably were repairing it because in one place we had to go around a fence around a site.

So we went on and hoped to find a store. We did. My eyes focused on pastries. They had some chocolate ones. I took four, but there was no price anywhere. So we were going to be surprised. And we were damn surprised when we paid 4 pounds. So one chocolate pastry costs a pound. My fiance was really angry when he was eating them. We wanted to save money, and it didn't work out. At least they were tasty.

As you may have noticed on the zoo map, there is a river. That's more a canal. It was beautiful, and it would have been a beautiful walk around it, but the water was quite stinking.

Even the Zoo was part of the London Pass, so we didn't have to pay anything and could go right into its guts. First, we went to explore the pavilions around and beyond the river. Our first stop was hippos. We ran around the exposition and the inner quarters, and there was no colossal hippo anywhere. Only two little hippo kids who weren't kids in the final. They were probably adults of Pygmy Hippo which is a really small hippo.

Then we stopped at the giraffes, where I had to laugh, although it was not too laughable. One giraffe was eating a kind of dry sticks on a dry tree, which probably served as a food holder, and the other one vainly tried to reach the juicy green branches of the tree in the next exposition. But even her giraffe's neck was too short to reach them.

Our attention also caught okapis. I already knew these animals, so I wasn't surprised when they called them the shy cousins of a giraffe. But they were so shy that I didn't have a good shot with them, and so I would instead offer shots of (probably) an owl who made us very entertained. It has such a funny face.

The otter's pond was empty, while the meerkats were in the middle of digging. But as it is with the laborers, somebody had to look after them.

The sun was already high, and the heat began to be totally unbearable. So we sat down on a bench in the shade. Probably all benches in the zoo are made from recycled pet bottles. Over two thousands of bottles are used on one.

In the rainforest, just thanks to some lady, we noticed sleeping sloth just above our heads. One could actually reach it because no cage or glass was separating us from it.

We also found piranhas in the pavilion, which looked quite toothless or funny snails.

And the lemurs were pretty boring. They all slept. Even in the London zoo, you can walk right between them.

Do your partner need to go to the toilet, and you have to wait for him? Don't despair! In the meantime, you can look at animal poo. All the poos falling out of herbivores are recycled as fertilizer for farmers.

The thirteenth hour was approaching when the commented feeding of penguins should start, and I couldn't miss it. Just like in the Prague zoo, even in London, there is at least one animal show per hour. We found the place to sit. The sun was shining at us all the time because there was no place to hide from it at the penguin pool and a lot of people were interested in it. You've learned a lot of interesting things during the show.

After the show, we vanished into a local souvenir shop where I bought a small plush baby penguin. For 3 pounds it was almost for free. Then we went for lunch in the canteen. There was a lot to choose from, but we went straight to fish and chips. We are in England, so what tourists we should be if we didn't try fish and chips. The fish was really big and without bones, but they probably forgot to salt it. So it was just fish in batter. And of course, we had chips. They were OK, but we put some strange mayonnaise on the plate. It was terribly sour. People in England really love vinegar. I guess they are even drinking it. But I understand. Then they probably don't mind that the fish is not salted at all. The vinegar will kill its taste. (My fiance can't take pictures.)

After lunch, we returned to the penguins to get some good pictures.

And butterflies followed. They had their pavilion in the inflatable hall in the shape of a caterpillar. Really themed and funny. But some butterflies have a habit of sitting on the ground. They probably wanted to commit suicide.

After the butterflies, we went to see parrots. We were welcomed by three yellow and blue amigos.

What pleased us the most about the whole zoo is that they have lovebirds there! Not our Fischeri ones, but the black-cheeked. The cage was full of little green and black cuties, and they all were cheerfully doing their bird stuff. But you can hardly find one on the pictures. I have two photos on which there is at least one lovebird to see. The fastest hawk-eyed and diligent readers, therefore, have a unique chance to earn up to 2 Steem. 1 Steem per photo.

The rules are simple:

1. Choose a photo and try to find a lovebird in it.
2. Did you find it? Make a screenshot and, in some way (for example, in the MS Paint), mark the location of the lovebird in the photo.
3. Insert the screenshot with the marked location into the comment.
4. Wait for my answer whether you won or not.

The winner will be the first comment with a lovebird marked in it.

The rules apply to each photograph separately. There can be up to two winners.

To view a full-size photo, click on the image.

And to know who you are looking for and at the same time have proof that I'm not kidding, here is a photo of a sign:

At the exit of the bird pavilion, where the birds are flying over your head, we noticed quite a special clock. It was by chance the very time to find out that it wasn't just a boring clock. Every half an hour it moves and makes you a pretty fun spectacle.

I shot it in action, though not all because before I realized what was going on, the best was over. I will briefly describe it.

Every half hour, a man opens a lid (I'm not sure, but probably a bird is underneath), and a bird will fly out of the cage held by a woman. Both characters will start looking around where the birds have fled, while the two birds are spinning around them. They are spinning for a while, and in the meantime, the toucans downstairs will go up where they bow a few times. Then the spinning birds begin to slow down and eventually return to their original places. Likewise, the toucans will come back down, and birds will come out of the small rectangles in the middle (I don't know what they mean).

Another stop on our journey is an old abandoned penguin pond. It is a heritage that wasn't perfect at all. On the sign, they mention that the water was shallow, so wild birds were stealing fishes to little penguins, and the nests were too close to each other. It was dangerous for the chicks, so they had to take and feed them manually.

Not far from the birds, they have lions, but you know the cats. Most of the day they're just sleeping, so we didn't see them. But the decorations were nice. One could have taken pictures of different tuk-tuks and other means of transport. Somehow the interactive decoration reminded me of what we have near the elephants in Prague.

Then we went to the B.U.G.S. pavilion. There wasn't just insect there. There were also sea creatures. What, however, was the most original and definitely nothing for weak shits, was an exposition of spiders. I'm not kidding. In a little room, you moved freely between the spiders who had been chilling on their webs. They were fairly decent creatures with a nice juicy butt.

I don't suffer from arachnophobia, but after leaving the room, I tend to check my shoulders if something isn't crawling on them.

In addition, we were quite fascinated by upside down jellyfish. They were truly upside down!

But there were also normal jellyfish and even leeches.

Like another interesting thing you won't find elsewhere, you can see the zoo behind the scenes. In some pavilions, there was a window into a room where they breed fish or do other stuff with other animals.

Unfortunately, I found out that we are missing photographs of the famous reptile pavilion where the famous Harry Potter snake scene was shot. The reason will be exhaustion after several hours spent in the sun. So, we run through the last pavilions pretty quick.

The last photos are from the aquarium, where we spotted the morays and aquarium full of starfish.

The London zoo really amazed me, and even though we wanted to relax this day, we didn't relax at all. At home, we fell on the bed and died.