Not necessarily the first place you think of as a holiday destination but there was an offer on with the hotel and the train fare turned out to be pretty cheap.
We spent the first day wandering around the city's marina area and checking out the shops. It feels like a lot of work has been done recently to improve both areas as everything seemed pretty modern and most of the shops were still occupied. We also checked out the aquarium (if you've read any of my previous entries, you may notice that I love aquariums). Sadly this one was a bit on the disappointing side. After promising one of the largest captive octopus in the world, we got to the tank to find that said octopus was out on loan at another aquarium while the tank was being improved.
Keeping with the animal theme, we decided to go to Bristol Zoo on the second day. After the slightly unimpressive experience at the aquarium, I had low expectations. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the animals were out and about despite it being a little chilly. Plus, we managed to get quite close to some of them, particularly the lemurs. You could actually go inside the lemur enclosure and as it had just been feeding time, they were all hanging out on the wooden barriers separating the path from the trees/rocky area intended for them to play on. I was almost close enough to touch them, pretty cool.
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Giant tortoise
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Up close with the lemurs
We also checked out the penguin and seal feeding time. The two weren't fed at the same time but had enclosures next to each other. The seals had been trained to do some fun tricks, apparently to help them get checked regularly by the vets. The keepers demonstrated by getting them waving, jumping in and out of the pool and generally performing in exchange for some food.
Back to normal South West London life now but I'll try to write another update soon.
