Day Trip to the Zoo

Last Thursday, my friend Jonathan and I decided to take our little ones, Cillian and Noa, to the zoo.

Now there are a lot of zoos here in Holland, but Jonathan had picked one near Antwerp in Belgium, about a two hour drive from where we live. A lot of the nice zoos here in Holland would have also taken upto two hours to get to, so the fact that this one was in a completely different country didn't make it any further to get to. It's just a funny thing living in a small(ish) country like Holland that sometimes you need a passport for a day out to the zoo (not that I actually took my passport.)

The day was promising to be a rainy one, so at first I was thinking about postponing, as being from Southern California, I'm afraid of rain. Jonathan, being from Ireland, didn't seem to be concerned with getting a bit wet, and kindly told me to grow a pair (and with some hormone therapy should be likely).

So they stopped by at the ungawdly time of 10.00am (for someone who leaves work at 3.00am, then watches the 3rd presidential debate live until 5.45am, waking up at anytime that ends with "am" is ungawdly). We loaded Noa's car seat next to Cillian's and off we went!



We arrived just before noon and there was hardly anyone there. The parking lot was empty. I don't know if it was the weather or the time we arrived, but it looked like we were going to have the park to ourselves. We loaded the critters into the double buggy that Jonathan had brought and walked into the park. Now there's something about 2 guys walking with 2 young kids in a double stroller that's just a little bit, uhhhh, well, uhhhh gay. It's a good thing that I switched the earring to the other ear :) Wouldn't want any rumors to start.





The zoo itself was OK. I'm not into zoos so much, but I enjoy finding something fun for Noa to do. Most of the time, we just let Noa and Cillian run around. They weren't so interested in the animals. They were more interested in splashing in the mud puddles, wandering around in the forest and running after each other. Other than the constant threat of rain, we were actually very lucky with the weather - it had only rained once while we were there and it was only for a few minutes.




One complaint about the zoo, though: there was no baby changing station in the men's room, so we had to change the nappies in the ladies' room, which got us a few stares from some of the women and some giggles from some teenage girls. Once, I was lifting Noa to get a good look at some of the animals when I noticed a lot of mud on her tights and dress. I wasn't so surprised as this little girl gets so dirty when she plays outside. However, upon further inspection, it didn't smell like mud, and it was, in fact, not mud but poo! At that moment, we were quite far from any facility, so I had to give Noa a complete cleaning and change of clothes on a bench in the cold - poor Noa. Luckily, Margreet had prepared a complete baby bag with new set of clothes, so crisis was averted!

Anyway, we got home at about 6pm, and after some dinner and a long bath, Noa slept for 13 hours straight (until Margreet had to wake her up to go to the creche!), so we can assume that a good day was had by all!