Whipsnade Zoo

We took last Friday off and wanted to do something special for Brady's birthday.  Our zoo memberships give us access to two zoos in the London area, one being 15 minutes from our house in Regent's Park, the other a bit 'outside' of London.  I decided it would be a perfect day trip to visit the Whipsnade Zoo which is the zoo just a 'bit' outside of the city.  I think everyone else involved in the day's activities had their doubts, not about the zoo itself, but about the journey. After much convincing everyone had bought into the great idea of a day at the zoo!

Lesson learned - the distance from your starting point does not indicate the ease or duration of the journey. 

Outbound trip summary below:

1. 20 minute tube ride
2. 10 minute process to walk through rail station and buy rail tickets
3. 7 minute wait till train arrived
4. 55 minute train ride including 4-5 stops
5. Arrived at end destination with hopes of finding correct bus stop that we had pre-bought tickets only to find out the zoo bus only runs at the top of the hour every other hour
6. 20 minute bumpy cab ride leaving everyone feeling sick

Whew, finally made it.  We had 600 glorious acres of wildlife to explore.  This is a bold statement from someone who herself is not an animal lover.  We basically had the park to ourselves.  It was obviously not peak season for a trip to a zoo.  Several of the attractions such as the train ride had been shut down for the winter except for weekends.  It was  little bit on the cool & damp side, but overall nice. You could get really close to the animals.  At times a bit too close.  They actually had some 'free roaming' animals.  Sorta like a rabbit, but not a rabbit animals.  The other thing cool about the Whipsnade Zoo is for people with cars you have the option of taking a safari type tour and bringing your car inside the zoo.

All in all, good day, awesome toffee bar, long journey!  Thanks for being good sports everyone!