First thing, we geared up for the Bristol Zoo. Funny…when we discussed it the preceding day, Chris and Ant said it was a really big, involved zoo. Then this morning when we talked about it (before we got there) they said we could do the whole thing in a couple of hours. Well, in reality it was pretty small, about like Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. Nice place, good for kids, but, I feel like “You’ve seen one zoo, you’ve seen them all!” Of course, I haven’t been to San Diego zoo yet, so that might be the one that makes me change my mind.
We got there a little early. If you look carefully in the window reflection above you can see me!
I won’t bore you with the animal descriptions, except to show this one posing seal. I have some movies of the seals, but I can’t yet figure out how to get them into the blog. I’ll work on it; they were really funny to watch.
But the grand thing about this zoo is the rope adventure thing they had set up, called Zooropia. It was a series of high-wire walking adventures, where the participants are clipped to a safety wire and make their way all around the zoo, high up (their feet were about 20’ off the ground). Alex did this, and here are some pictures of him. He really, REALLY liked it!
Trust me, he’s in there somewhere.
It ended with a long zip-wire ride down to ground level. Truly the highlight of his day…and it’s a good thing, too, because we jumped on the highway to get to Colinette before they closed – so, nothing of interest to Alex at all for a long time.
Colinette was a Mecca trip for me. Ever since I’ve started knitting, I’ve been trying to use their yarns; sometimes I can get them, but more often, they are either (a) too expensive (as much as $20 a skein) or (b) too scarce. It’s hard to find enough matching yarns for a sweater for me, and they won’t ship to US customers because of their current distribution agreement. So, I spent a few minutes drooling over the store stock, then ran around grabbing stuff off the shelf to buy. Chris amused himself by wandering around looking at the knitted-up samples and commenting on the yarns that he’d seen me use through the years. In the end I spent a respectable 165 GBP, enough for two and a half sweaters (about $9 a skein). (Not sure what I’ll do about that half a sweater, yet…) While we were in the store, Alex and Ant went and looked at the narrow-gauge Llanfaer Caereinion steam railway next door, but we were unable to take a trip on it due to scheduling.
Good news for US knitters, Colinette tells me they are taking over their US distribution in a few months. Prices should drop, and yarns should be more readily available!
We made it to the hotel shortly thereafter. Since we had been stumbling around the zoo all morning and sitting cramped up in the car all afternoon, we decided to briskly walk to the Iron Bridge and find a place for dinner. Our chosen pub was pricey, but absolutely delicious and also quite relaxing. Then we came back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep.
View from the top of the Iron Bridge:
Tomorrow…Wales, Caernarvon, and Anglesey.
The US Picks 