The zoo was about a 20 minute walk there. Once there, we got our tickets and our map and decided our route. First up was the lions, but they were asleep, but we still saw them at least. Then we saw the polar bears their baby, and then a brown bear. I’ve never seen a brown bear before so that was cool. He even pooped right in front of us, which is always hilarious. You know the phrase “Does a bear shit in the woods?”, well he def does at the zoo.
Next up was the elephants. There was even a baby elephant too. I haven’t seen elephants in forever. One of the zoos at home (I forget if it was Lincoln Park or Brookfield that use to have them, but one of my favorite zoo memories was seeing the elephants poop as a kid. I found it equal parts fascinating and gross that they basically shat bricks of hay. Or at least that’s what it looked like.) Anywho, we then saw the seal and they were doing tricks and yelling which was fun to see. We also saw camels, Tasmanian devils, kangaroos, and a sleeping panda. I’ve never seen the last three before, and again very, very cool. I wish we would have gotten a better view of the panda, but it was hot, and he was chilling in the shade. We tried to see him three different times, and all three, he stayed in the same spot.
One of the funnier things we saw today happened when another animal I had never seen before, did something I have talked about a lot already. This zoo also had hippos and they are huge. Like I said, I have never seen a hippopotamus in real life before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t think they were this large, then it happened, the hippo started to poop. While pooping he swung his tail around spreading the poop all around. It was beyond bizarre. And then all over this tail and butt. So gross, yet so funny. We were laughing so hard.
But the best and most hilarious part was the baboons. There were like 10 or so of them and we couldn’t keep our eyes off them. There were even two adorable babies. Now if you know me, you know my obsession/fascination with primates and how similar their mannerisms are to us and how my life goal is literally to be in the jungle with the silver back gorillas. That will happen one day. I promise you that. Anyway, we were there for about twenty minutes just watching and observing and enjoying this. The dad baboon and the baby boy baboon kept having their red rockets stick out and then just boners and were just swinging them around. Like it was hard to not see them and not laugh. Yes, I know it’s immature but it’s still funny. We were absolutely cracking up. And then the dad baboon starting rubbing his penis. Yup, you read that right. And directly in front of many children, and us. Of course again, we were in absolute hysterics. Tears were running down our faces. My abs hurt from laughing so hard. We saw a few more animals like giraffes, rhinos, parrots, etc... This was actually a fantastic zoo. It was easy to get around and there were multiple vantage points to see some of the same animals. We really enjoyed it there. It was definitely worth the entry fee.
After the zoo, we walked back to the hotel and knew we wanted to get the local delicacy of hotdogs wrapped in a roll for lunch. It’s pretty much a hotdog in a bun, but the bun is French bread with a hole in it and the hot dog goes in there sticking out from the top. It looked kind of phallic, but we heard we needed to eat one. So we did. I’m not a big fan of hot dogs in general, but I’ll eat one at a baseball game or a bbq, but in this case, I also ate one. And I enjoyed it.
After lunch, we were trying to figure out what to do next. We were wondering if there were any public pools or hotel pools we could get access to just relax and enjoy the weather. I asked the front desk and she had told us there are “pools” set up along the canal with docks and lifeguards. We had seen one yesterday on our canal tour and I had read there were outdoor hot tubs here, but this is maybe what I had read about. We would see find out. She had told us it was about a 15 minute walk and the water was clean. We were so down.
We went up and got changed and came back down for directions and they guy at the front desk was nice enough to lend us bikes to go there with for free. It was a pretty short bike ride and we honestly weren’t sure what to expect when there, but it was essentially pools carved out in docks on the canal with tons of people laying out and sunbathing. It was very local and we were digging it.
We ended up setting up our towels next to these two girls about our age and talked to them the whole time we were there about the culture, food, dating, etc... It was so fun talking to them and just hanging out. We were definitely the only tourists there. We all exchanged Instagram info because they wanted to follow along on the rest of our trip and one of the girls actually had family in Chicago so we told her to be in touch when she visits.
I went in the water up to about my thighs standing on the stairs because even though I’m sure it was clean (we were told it’s tested very often), there was a lot of algae floating around that I wasn’t having. Ick. We stayed there about two hours and then bikes back to the hotel because we wanted to get in a load of laundry.
The hotel across the street from ours has a laundry machine and dryer and they are affiliated with ours so we were told we could wash our stuff for a small fee and we wanted to get some of our clothes cleaned while we had the opportunity. We got very basic instructions but when our clothes came out of the washer, some of it had changed color. Ugh. My new leopard bathing suit was now black, my neon and blue socks were now black and blue and some other stuff had changed color too. We had no idea why this happened, but when we told the front desk they said it may have been because we used such hot water. When setting the machine, I forgot it was in Celcius and not Fahrenheit. Half my fault, half theirs for not giving us better information on what to set it on. Such is life. Nothing of super importance was ruined, but I was a little upset about it.
While we dried our clothes, we took our bikes back to the Meatpacking district to grab a quick bite to eat. I had read about a place called Tommi’s Burger Joint so we went there. It was fairly quick and the burgers and fries were very good. Just like last night, excellent American food here. And also like last night, that area was just cool to be in. There was lots going on and may people our age out and about.
Once done eating, we went back to get our now dry clothes and get organized for our flight out tomorrow morning. Off to Budapest we go!
No comments:
Post a Comment